Victoria’s Scottish Lion

by Greenwood, Adrian; Haythornthwaite, Philip;

  They enjoyed only a few weeks’ rest before Graham selected them to join the expedition to raise the French siege of the port of Tarragona. On 21 June a force under Colonel Skerrett set out from Gibraltar in six ships, arriving off Tarragona five days later.23 Graham had ordered Skerrett not to land if he thought the mission might end in surrender. Having gone ashore to meet the garrison, Skerrett concluded that their position was beyond remedy, and so kept his troops aboard.

  On 28 June French troops stormed the town. It took them just half an hour to take the outer defences. Campbell watched from offshore as Tarragona was sacked and then set on fire. Two thousand civilians and 2,000 soldiers were butchered, and 8,000 Spanish troops taken prisoner.24 Twelve hundred British soldiers would not have tipped the balance.

  Despite this damp squib, Campbell had impressed Graham enough to secure a new assignment: a much prized posting as an aide-de-camp (ADC). A staff post like this was the fastest route to high rank. By convention, it was an ADC who carried home a victory despatch, and his reward was immediate promotion. Campbell’s linguistic skills, notably his fluency in Spanish, must have helped. He was appointed to serve with ‘General Livesay’,* himself under the command of General Francisco Lopez Ballesteros, one of Spain’s most celebrated soldiers.

  All went well initially. Livesay and Ballesteros had spent most of 1811 harrying the French in and around Andalucia, and on 25 September they defeated a whole column at San Roque before taking 100 enemy soldiers prisoner on 5 November.25 Frustrated at this new nuisance, Soult sent Victor to subdue Ballesteros and then storm Tarifa.

  By 20 December Tarifa was surrounded by ‘four or five thousand Infantry and 250 or 300 Cavalry’.26 Following a concerted French offensive on New Year’s Eve, the Governor of Gibraltar sent an extra detachment. The natural choice was the flank companies of the 2/9th and so Campbell, having finished his time as ADC, led his light company to Tarifa once again. The allied position there was growing worse. The defences had been weakened by Victor’s assault and the British command was divided over what to do next. Fortunately, the French decided the question for them. On 4 January, his trenches filling with mud, his guns sinking into the ooze, Victor started to pull back his artillery. At 3 a.m. the next morning he began a full retreat. Campbell was in Tarifa for just a few hours before the enemy vacated their lines.** The siege had cost the French 500 men, more than 300 horses and mules, and three guns.27 British casualties were fewer than seventy.

  Campbell’s service with Livesay in late 1811 should have laid the foundations for great things. Instead it became a millstone. While Campbell spent a quiet 1812 in Gibraltar, Ballesteros’s pride outgrew his talents. Piqued by Wellington’s appointment to supreme command of the allied armies in October 1812, he refused to serve under him. He was swiftly arrested and imprisoned. Any association with Ballesteros or his acolytes was a black mark on an officer’s record. Campbell was denied another staff appointment for ten years. It was an object lesson in the dangers of hobnobbing with generals: one benefited from their victories and suffered their defeats by proxy.

  Wellington, meanwhile, enjoyed a stellar 1812. Having invaded Spain, he took Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajoz by siege, before winning a signal victory at Salamanca. In February 1812 he was raised to Earl and that August to Marquess of Wellington.*** A month later parliament voted him a lordly £100,000 towards his future housing needs and the Garter as an amuse bouche.

  That autumn his luck petered out. He was thwarted at Burgos and had to withdraw to Portugal. Disease chipped away at an army already weakened by an arduous retreat. The one good omen in those depressing winter months was the news of Napoleon’s costly withdrawal from Moscow. Campbell’s colleagues in the 1/9th limped back from Burgos with heavy casualties. The powers that be decided to sacrifice the second battalion to reinforce the first, and in early 1813 Campbell and 400 men transferred to the first battalion overwintering in Portugal, while the rump of the 2/9th returned to Canterbury. Campbell was again given command of the light company. He found the men recovered from the ordeals of the previous year. James Hale, now a corporal under Campbell, noted that ‘having good provisions, rest, and a little money to purchase a few good bottles of wine, all past fatigues were smothered’.28

  With his army recuperated, and the weather improving, Wellington felt confident enough to launch a new campaign to force the French back to the Pyrenees. One of the occupational hazards of having a reputation for hard fighting is a tendency to be placed in the vanguard, and the 1/9th were chosen to be among those spearheading the advance, in General Hay’s brigade, itself part of the 5th Division under Sir James Leith. Since Campbell’s first campaign in the peninsula, the scale of the war had grown exponentially. Wellington now commanded more than 75,000 British troops, besides tens of thousands of Spanish and Portuguese.29 The 5th Division was just one of several in a corps d’armée commanded by Thomas Graham. ‘Next to Lord Wellington’s self, there is no one who will take so good care of us’, wrote Gomm.30

  The allies would march into Spain in three columns, rendezvous at Valladolid and then assault Burgos and so complete the job Wellington had left unfinished the previous autumn. On 14 May Campbell’s men started out, soon crossing the River Douro via the ferry at Peso de Regoa before meeting up with the rest of Graham’s force.31 For the first time Campbell kept his own journal of the campaign. Crossing the Esla by pontoon bridge on 1 June was his first entry.32 With age his prose style improved and he became more forthcoming, but with its arid concern for the minutiae of road, weather and terrain, this early memoir reads like a tactical appraisal. Then again, Campbell’s omissions are revealing in themselves. He makes no mention of senior officers, except when he dined with a general. He voices no opinions or grumbles, instead maintaining a prim, matter-of-fact detachment as if he were writing for an exam. He is never contemplative or critical, always protective of his own thoughts, the strictly impartial narrator, even when at the centre of the action. This is the work of either a young officer trying to impress or an obsessive with a growing inability to switch off. Posterity and self-improvement seem to be his motivation. Perhaps Campbell, in his precocious way, regarded it as a valuable scientific account, the product of a very serious-minded lieutenant, anxious to observe and record. Its striking impassivity suggests that this was a role he enjoyed, that of the outsider looking in.

  Initially, he had little to record. By 5 June Campbell had reached Medina de Rio Seco33 without ever once running into the enemy. French resistance was negligible. At Zamora and Toro the emperor’s troops simply ran away before the allies’ approach. The French were expected to make a stand at Burgos, but instead Wellington found it deserted. At each town and village the allies were hailed as liberators, greeted with bread and wine and shouts of ‘Viva los Ingleses!’34

  The offensive was proceeding on, or ahead of, schedule. Underlying that speed was abundant food. For Wellington, ‘No troops can serve to any good purpose unless they are regularly fed. A starving army is actually worse than none.’35 Rations were the priority. Not even the tiniest component of supply escaped the marquess’s busy mind. His overhaul of regimental kitchens reads like the work of a restaurateur.36 Having seen shortages ruin Moore’s army, Campbell was now witness to a master class in the application of method to this Cinderella arm of the military. It made a deep impression. While other generals were game to pitch in regardless, Campbell only moved when his supplies were secure. By the 1850s, when British victories had become so effortless as to convince young officers that dull matters like provisions were unimportant, Campbell was one of the few generals left who fully appreciated their importance, having witnessed an army on its knees at Corunna, and one fighting fit under Wellington. It was why Campbell’s men survived better than most in the harsh Crimean winter of 1854–55 and why he managed to supply an army across thousands of miles of hostile Indian territory with scarcely a hiccup. Campbell might have been pilloried for his hesitation, but it was no more than Wellington
’s shrewd preparedness.

  By 15 June Campbell had crossed the River Ebro and entered a verdant new land. ‘I can conceive of nothing finer than the whole route from the banks of the Upper Ebro across the mountains’,wrote Gomm.37 ‘In a scene so lovely, soldiers seemed quite misplaced’, added another officer. ‘The glittering of arms, the trampling of horses, and the loud voices of the men, appeared to insult its peacefulness.’38 Even Campbell felt ‘the fertile, rich and beautiful valleys’39 deserved a mention. Wellington’s columns now massed as one and with Graham’s troops up front, advanced parallel to the Ebro. By the 18th, they had reached Osma. Around noon Campbell spotted Frenchmen up ahead. They were General Maucune’s troops marching north to Bilbao.40 ‘The meeting was as great a surprise to them as to us’, he recalled. Together with other light companies, and with artillery in support, Campbell was ordered to advance. As they caught sight of the blue enemy uniforms, his troops surged forward. ‘This being the first encounter this campaign, the men were ardent and eager, and pressed the French most wickedly’, Campbell explained.41 ‘We continued advancing, driving them before us like a flock of sheep for nearly two leagues, giving them a few shots when most convenient’, remembered Hale.42 The men advanced through the lightly wooded countryside, exchanging fire until sundown. ‘I found myself incapable of further exertion from fatigue and exhaustion occasioned by six hours of almost continuous skirmishing’, admitted Campbell.43 With 300 of the enemy taken prisoner, along with their baggage,44 it was a clear allied victory, but this was just the curtain-raiser.

  King Joseph’s troops had endured weeks of retreat. The honour of France and of the Bonapartes was at stake and Joseph knew with every mile of ground lost to Wellington, his brother’s teeth ground all the louder. For Joseph, more bon viveur than beau sabreur, the greater worry was his ponderous baggage train stuffed with plunder, specifically how to get it safely back to Paris, but he knew that to avoid Napoleon’s wrath when he got there he had first to make a stand. He settled on Vitoria. Here Joseph was sure that he could, if not reverse, then at least stem the allied advance. The dished basin round Vitoria provided a scenic 12 by 6-mile war stadium, with ample scope for that French favourite, artillery, to come into play. The town lay at the eastern end, with roads spreading out from it like a spider’s web. From the north-east corner of the basin flowed the River Zadorra, running westwards past the town and, after a sharp hairpin turn, snaking south-west through the mountains. It afforded Joseph a natural defensive barrier.

  Wellington pushed forward with the utmost haste, reaching Vitoria on 20 June. He planned to mount a bold, simultaneous assault from all sides, throwing a tightening noose around the French. The challenge was co-ordinating his disparate battalions over such a wide arena with nothing but gallopers to relay messages. If one section of the line failed, the French could easily regain the initiative. Graham’s corps, at around 20,000 men the strongest portion of Wellington’s army, would bear down on the French flank from the north and cut off their retreat. The ferocity of his attack would depend on how Lord Dalhousie’s two divisions fared to Graham’s right. Graham was to keep mobile, avoid getting bogged down in fighting near Vitoria, and be ready to prevent the enemy escaping eastwards. However, should Dalhousie gain the upper hand, Graham was to grab the opportunity to advance.

  So far that month, Campbell’s only rest had been back on 12 June.45 Already tired after a gruelling journey through the mountains, he had to march his company through the night to keep to Wellington’s plan. ‘We formed our camp about two leagues from Vitoria, on a sort of wild wilderness place, among brambles, thorns, etc and to my thinking, almost all sorts of vermin’, complained Hale. The men were issued with their meat ration but, having left almost all of their kit in the rear, had nothing to boil it in, so instead broiled it on the coals of the campfires.46 Having snatched a little sleep, they awoke an hour before dawn and, after a breakfast of ½lb of bread per man, formed up to march on Vitoria. By 10 a.m. the early morning mists had given way to clear blue sky and as Campbell’s company reached the heights immediately north of the town, they ‘had a fine view of the French army … formed all ready for combat along the river for three or four miles each way’.47

  Wellington’s offensive started promisingly. Allied troops under General Rowland Hill crossed the Zadorra to the south, and took the Puebla Heights. Stiff French resistance slowed his advance, but Hill could be content that he had captured the first objective. By 11 a.m. Wellington himself had started to press in from the west. It was imperative that the divisions kept up with one another as they closed in, but round the valley at Graham’s section of the line there seemed precious little action.

  Graham’s offensive had stalled. Finding the whole of General Reille’s Army of Portugal* opposing him, and conscious of his orders to avoid getting entangled in a pitched battle too soon, he prudently halted short, waiting for Dalhousie’s troops to appear to his right, as instructed. However, the arrival at 11 a.m. of 5,000 guerrillas under the command of General Longa persuaded Graham to push forward, and so, a little after noon, Campbell received the order to advance. Ahead were the villages of Gamarra Mayor, Gamarra Menor and Abechuco, each a little north of the river. The British needed to take all three.

  Major-General Andrew Hay’s brigade was to take the heights above Gamarra Mayor, his right flank covered by Campbell’s light company, but as they advanced, the French pulled back towards the stronger defensive line of the Zadorra. Hay’s brigade paused. Campbell recorded that:

  While we were halted – waiting it was said, for orders – the enemy occupied Gamarra Mayor in considerable force, placed two guns at the head of the principal entrance into the village, threw a cloud of skirmishers in front amongst the corn-fields, and occupied with six pieces of artillery the heights immediately behind the village on the left bank.48

  Further away, beyond the French guns, he could make out more enemy infantry waiting in reserve.

  Frustrated at the lack of visible progress from Graham, at 2 p.m.** Wellington sent an unambiguous order to press home the attack and storm the three villages standing in his way. To reach them, the British would have to cross open ground and suffer the French grapeshot. Even then, the enemy could still retreat and make a stand at the river, but Graham had to maintain momentum. He ordered Major-General Robinson’s brigade to assault Gamarra Mayor, with Campbell’s light company detached to cover its right flank. Opposing them was an entire French division under General Lamartinière.

  Immediately Campbell neared the village, he encountered ‘a most severe fire of artillery and musquetry … from behind garden walls, and the houses which the enemy had occupied’. The air was clotted with lead, the French response so ferocious that Robinson’s advance was stopped in its tracks.*** Having regrouped, the British charged forward again, and, in Campbell’s words, ‘did not take a musquet from the shoulder until they carried the village’,49 overwhelming the French and forcing them to withdraw over the bridge. As Robinson’s men followed, they were gunned down by artillery on the far bank. Through the lingering gunsmoke, French infantry emerged in a timely counter-attack. The British, winded, pulled back.

  There then followed a succession of attacks and counter-attacks, a murderous ebb and flow in which neither side gained the upper hand. The British were limited by the narrow street that led to the bridge, allowing few to muster before charging forward and restricting any assault to a fraction of Robinson’s full strength, but still they had to try. Campbell was ordered to cover the left flank of a fresh advance by the Royal Scots and the 38th Foot. Vigorously executed by men new to the fight, it forced the French back from the bridge once more, only for the British to be repulsed again by an enemy counter-stroke.50

  Gamarra Mayor was the exception. By now the other two villages, Abechuco and Gamarra Menor, were Graham’s. To the west, Wellington was finding the French response reassuringly inept. Generals Picton and Kempt had secured the bridges across the Zadorra, and Hill’s men co
ntinued to advance from the south. All across the plain Joseph’s armies were on the back foot. The valley was strewn with their relics: abandoned muskets and orphaned shakos. In desperation, Joseph gave the order to fall back to the town. From there his only means of escape was the road due east to Salvatierra. Responsibility for preventing the enemy from slipping the noose lay with Graham. It was now imperative that he take the road before Joseph’s army could flee along it, but Gamarra Mayor still barred the way. Here the two sides were locked in stalemate, each with such a withering fire trained on the bridge that neither could cross. Campbell had deployed his light company to the left of the village, to harry the enemy on the far bank and beat back any French attempts to ford the river. Ordered not to ‘expose ourselves more than we could help, nor to advance one inch without an order’, wrote Hale, ‘we formed ourselves under cover of a bit of a bank that was about knee high, and in this position we continued skirmishing for more than two hours’.51 Opposite, the French skirmishers had been relieved three times, but Campbell’s men had to continue without a rest.52 As afternoon turned to evening, there seemed to be no way out of the deadlock and no way to dislodge the French on the far bank. If Graham could not push forward soon, Wellington’s noose would fail.

  Then, quite unexpectedly, the enemy on the bank opposite began to fall back.53 Seizing the initiative, Campbell led his company towards the bridge. Finding it ‘heaped with dead and wounded’, the casualties ‘were rolled over the parapet into the river underneath’54 to make way for the allied infantry and cavalry. One of Picton’s brigades, together with the hussars, had swept down and attacked Reille in the rear, forcing him to retreat before he was cut off. ‘When we crossed the bridge the whole of the British cavalry covered the plain of Vitoria’, recalled Gomm. ‘I assure you 4,000 British helmets reflecting the rays of the setting sun across the plain was rather an animating spectacle.’55 What Oman called a ‘brilliant and costly affair’ was finally over. ‘By God, Graham hit it admirably!’ declared Wellington.56