by Peter Snow
In those early weeks of 1809 Wellesley was anxious to keep his profile high and to fortify those in cabinet who wanted to use the Portuguese and Spanish revolts to weaken Napoleon. He believed that, if wisely exploited, the Peninsula could do much to drain Napoleon’s strength. French occupation of the Iberian Peninsula was tying down nearly 200,000 troops. Wellesley now launched an important initiative that was to help secure his return to the battlefield. He sent Castlereagh a memorandum on 7 March emphasising the key importance to the Spanish resistance and to the very survival of Portugal of a reinforced British presence in Lisbon. ‘The British force employed in Portugal should … not be less than 30,000 men, of which number 4000 or 5000 should be cavalry, and there should be a large body of artillery.’ He indicated that such a force would be enough to resist a French force of up to 100,000 men. He added that British reinforcements should include ‘some companies of British riflemen’. This analysis was enough to shift Castlereagh back in support of a new Wellesley mission to Portugal. That same month Marshal Soult, one of Napoleon’s most trusty and experienced commanders, who had chased Moore to Corunna, swooped down from north-west Spain and made Oporto his headquarters. France’s seizure of Portugal’s second city and its harbour, vital to the Royal Navy, swung the rest of the British cabinet into line behind the mission.
On 2 April 1809 Wellesley was ordered back to Portugal. His demands for more cavalry, artillery and riflemen were endorsed by the government. The troops’ high level of training and superior weapons would greatly enhance his strength. With these new units he acquired the core of the balanced force that would allow him to prise the Peninsula from Napoleon’s grasp. And with them would come unprecedented numbers of highly literate and perceptive people determined to record their experiences. Like Wellesley himself they would tell the story of the triumphs and the setbacks, the joys and the horrors of their military crusade all the way to Waterloo. Some, like James Hale, Thomas Todd and Jonathan Leach, had already fought with him at Vimeiro. But a crowd of fresh storytellers, also eager to record their memories, embarked in ships on Britain’s south coast over the next few weeks.
They came from different parts of Britain’s massively unequal society of the early nineteenth century. It was a society in which the rich were fabulously wealthy and the poor frequently destitute. The rich were mostly synonymous with the aristocracy, who ran the country and unashamedly protected their privileges. They dispensed favours on the basis of family connection rather than merit. Advancement – including promotion in the forces – depended on patronage or cash or both. The poor were without privilege and, since they had no vote, they had no power to change things. All they could do was look for the best chance of earning money to secure a livelihood for their families. The army offered one avenue for enrichment through the meagre but regular pay it promised and through the opportunity it afforded for plunder. It also offered adventure and even glory to those who regarded fighting Napoleon as a heroic struggle for Britain’s survival. And, inevitably, the new Peninsular expedition attracted every extreme of human character, from men of sensitivity and honour to those to whom brutality and indifference to suffering were second nature.
Fred Ponsonby was a keen horseman, to whom a life spent in the cavalry seemed the obvious, natural career. He was twenty-six years old, a bluff, clubbable fellow with a large and prominent chin. The second son of the Earl of Bessborough, he was anchored comfortably in the aristocracy. The Bessboroughs – like the Wellesleys – had estates in Ireland, and Fred Ponsonby and Arthur Wellesley would become close friends in the Peninsula. Ponsonby’s mother, Harriet, was the sister of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire. Both women dabbled in gambling and it washed off on Fred Ponsonby, who occasionally had to appeal to his mother to pay off his billiard debts. He would write and thank her: ‘you have saved me out of a great scrape, and I hope you will not have reason to distrust me … in the future’. His sister was the notorious Lady Caroline Lamb. Fred called her Caro for short. As moody and unpredictable as he was buoyant and uncomplicated, she was attractive, a brilliant conversationalist and a natural prey for Lord Byron, who had a passionate affair with her. She famously described Byron as ‘mad, bad and dangerous to know’. By the summer of 1809 Ponsonby was a major, ready to embark with his regiment, the 23rd Light Dragoons, and hungry for his first piece of action.
William Tomkinson was another cavalryman. The nineteen-year-old son of a prosperous landowner in Cheshire, Tomkinson had grown up with horses and was to end up a lieutenant colonel. But in 1809 he was a raw young cavalry officer. He distinguished himself by having such a boisterous horse that it kicked overboard the second mate of the ship that was to take them both to Portugal. ‘The man fell the whole height of the vessel, there being no water near the quay at which we embarked, from the tide being out. He was left behind sick at Falmouth.’
There were Irishmen and Scots in plenty, a reflection of the poverty of their countries. Ned Costello, an eighteen-year-old from Dublin with more than his share of Irish wit and good humour, was attracted by the bounty of eighteen guineas he was paid on joining up. He soon found himself recruiting other young Irishmen at a guinea or two commission each time. He ended up in the 1st Battalion of the 95th Rifles under Colonel Beckwith. One artful young Irishman earned himself no fewer than four bounties by signing up with four separate regiments and narrowly escaped being arrested for desertion each time. A Scot, Joseph Donaldson, was only sixteen when he joined up in Aberdeen. His parents were distraught at the thought of him going off to fight a war in some strange country, but he defied them and proudly embarked with the 94th Scots Brigade. His enthusiasm waned when just about everyone aboard became seasick as soon as they left port.
Colonel Sydney Beckwith had fought with Wellesley at Vimeiro. His small band of light infantry in the 1/95th had deeply impressed Wellesley, who was now Britain’s Commander in Chief in the Peninsula. He had seen what invaluable sharpshooters they were with their long-range rifles, and he asked London to make it an urgent priority to get them to join him in Portugal as soon as possible. Beckwith had gone on after Vimeiro to follow Sir John Moore to Corunna. He and the handful of riflemen who had been shipped home were now stood by for the Peninsula again. But this time – following Wellesley’s request – a large battalion of around 1,100 of the Rifles would embark. Beckwith was aged thirty-seven, and popular with his men, who relished his humanity and understanding. They contrasted him very favourably with their brigade commander, the man who was to command all the light infantry troops with Wellesley, Brigadier General Robert Craufurd.
Craufurd was known as ‘Black Bob’, because however well he shaved he always had a swarthy chin. He was a hard taskmaster, free with punishment, and he bullied those he didn’t like. He came from an old Ayrshire family with a tradition of lawless feuding with its rivals, the Kennedies. Harshness and a quick temper were in Craufurd’s blood. He was forty-five when he arrived in the Peninsula, after half a lifetime of military experience. He had joined up at fifteen, observed Frederick the Great’s military manoeuvres, enjoyed a distinguished career fighting in India ten years before Wellesley, led a unit of light troops in the disastrous expedition to Buenos Aires in 1807 and commanded the Light Brigade under Sir John Moore in 1808–9. Benjamin Harris, who served with Wellesley at Vimeiro, came to dislike Black Bob’s ‘sternness’ during the Corunna campaign. At one stage he was told that if he, Harris, didn’t do one rather routine job better, Craufurd would ‘hang him’. In 1800 Robert Craufurd married Mary Holland, and remained her devoted husband until his death. One of Black Bob’s most redeeming qualities was his love for his wife, which he frequently expressed in letters to her from the Peninsula. ‘The affection is always there,’ he wrote in one letter to her, ‘as warm and immutable in its nature as the sun itself, though sometimes covered by a cloud.’ He talked of retiring from the army to be with her, and at one stage insisted to Wellesley that he had to go home and spend some time with Mary.
Jonath
an Leach, another rifleman, veteran of Vimeiro, quickly came to hate his brigade commander. In a letter home he called Craufurd ‘a damned tyrant and a great blackguard’. And George Simmons, whose motive for joining up was largely about earning enough to help the other less gifted members of his family, often found himself the object of Craufurd’s sharp tongue. Simmons made an entry in one of the three small notebooks he carried in his hat nearly every day, and wrote frequent letters. On the ‘long-wished-for day’ in May 1809 when he embarked, he wrote home: ‘This, my dear parents, is the happiest day of my life; and I hope, if I come where there is an opportunity of showing courage, your son will not disgrace the name of a British soldier.’
Quite separate from the infantry and the cavalry were the commissaries, whose job was supply. And Wellesley had already shown how obsessive he was about food for his men and forage for his horses. August Schaumann was a commissary officer. He too had struggled ashore in the breakers before Vimeiro. Because he was from Hanover he had the right to join the British regiment recruited exclusively in that city – the King’s German Legion, which had been founded in 1803. Refugees from those parts of Germany overrun by Napoleon owed a special allegiance to Britain’s King George III, who was also Elector of Hanover. They formed a rapidly growing military force which was much valued by Wellington. Schaumann’s childhood in Hanover had been deeply unhappy and it was easy for him to opt for a life of adventure. He had stayed on in the Peninsula after Wellesley went home, and he spent the winter struggling to arrange sustenance for Moore’s army as it retreated to Corunna. He complained that the ‘duties of a war commissary are the most laborious in the field’, but he made the most of his spare time. His childlike appearance belied the mischievous delight he took in the good life. He had a voracious appetite for food and women.
All these, and tens of thousands like them, were men born into that narrow window of history that would allow them to fight with Wellington. He didn’t know all of them. But they knew him. They called him ‘Old Nosey’ after his most distinctive feature. Over the next five or six years they would grow not so much to love him as to trust him because his judgement was nearly always right. Two years later George Simmons was to write in one of his small notebooks: ‘Wherever he is, confidence of success is the result. The French own it that, next to Bonaparte, he is the captain of Europe.’
One person Wellesley was to get to know very well was a bright young Scots officer who climbed aboard the warship Surveillante with him on 14 April for the voyage to Lisbon. His name was Alexander Gordon. An old colleague had recommended him to Wellesley as a very ‘active, intelligent’ staff officer. It wasn’t long before Gordon became one of his close aides. There was one quality that all the members of what Wellesley called his ‘family’ of top staff officers shared: high birth. Gordon, like another early recruit to the family, Fitzroy Somerset, had impeccable aristocratic connections: his brother was Lord Aberdeen, who became a diplomat and later Prime Minister. Wellesley didn’t think twice about including his own family among his top aides. He was an unashamed Tory, a believer in class and privilege. For him, aristocrats were born to lead, and people from the lower classes and from the ranks were unfit to be officers. Edward ‘Ned’ Pakenham, Kitty’s brother, was an intimate member of his staff and later an inspired commander of the 3rd Division. Wellesley made no secret of his contempt for ‘rankers’, men from the other ranks promoted to be officers. ‘If there is to be any influence in the disposal of military patronage, in aid of military merit, can there be any in our army so legitimate as that of family connection, fortune, and influence in the country?’ And years later, after all his campaigns were over, he observed: ‘I have never known an officer promoted from the ranks turn out well … they cannot stand drink.’ One man from the lowest ranks, Rifleman Benjamin Harris, also preferred his officers to be aristocrats: ‘I know from experience that in our army the men like best to be officered by gentlemen, men whose education has rendered them more kind in manners than your coarse officer, sprung from obscure origin and whose style is brutal and overbearing.’ Wellesley personified the aristocratic arrogance that made the British army one of the most conservative in Europe. France and Prussia had long abandoned the practice of buying commissions, and merit was the essential criterion for promotion in their armies. The odd contradiction in Wellesley was that, traditionalist though he was, he abhorred incompetence and was constantly frustrated by his powerlessness to promote or sack an officer on grounds of merit.
The Surveillante spent a boisterous first night at sea. Her captain thought it so dangerous that he sent a message for Wellesley to put his boots on and come on deck where he would be safer if the worst happened. Wellesley sent back that he was very happy in his cabin and preferred to swim, if he had to, without his boots on. The weather soon perked up and Wellesley was in Lisbon a week later on 22 April. He had seen the Portuguese capital before. Many of his soldiers had not. It was not the exotic paradise they had expected. ‘As seen on the far off horizon, Lisbon looks like a city of palaces. How cruelly the result disappoints you,’ remarked cavalryman George Farmer, who had earned his spurs chasing illegal whisky stills in Ireland. ‘Narrow streets choked up with filth of the most horrid kind, miserable wretches crowding about … a thousand symptoms besides of indolence and squalor and national character utterly degraded …’ And even three years later, long after its liberation, Portugal still presented an unappealing picture to newcomers from Britain like Private William Wheeler: ‘What an ignorant, priest ridden, dirty, lousy set of poor devils are the Portuguese. Without seeing them it is impossible to conceive there exist a people in Europe so debased.’
No doubt these were partly the naive first impressions of newcomers who had expected better, but Portugal had suffered dreadfully and was to be devastated by several years of further fighting. And this country was to be Wellesley’s closest ally in the war against Napoleon. All he could do was work with what he had, the still-primitive Portuguese army now being urgently drilled and trained by William Beresford. Its support would be vital, outnumbered as Wellesley was in the Peninsula by the French. His plan was to integrate the Portuguese units into his army and march north to try and throw the French out of Oporto. He would have liked to push east immediately into Spain to link up with Spanish forces eager for a battle with the French. But that would have to wait. He didn’t think it wise to leave Portugal with the French ‘in possession of a part of this country that is very fertile in resources and of the town of Oporto’. Oporto, 150 miles north of Lisbon, was powerfully placed on the north bank of the wide and fast-flowing River Douro, which flowed from the heart of Spain into the Atlantic.
For many of Wellesley’s troops the long march up from Lisbon was their first taste of real campaigning. The last day’s march, in particular, was a dreadful ordeal. They toiled for twenty-five miles under a scorching sun and amid clouds of dust. The road was narrow and there was little or no water on the way. Their feet were sore and their knapsacks seemed to become heavier and heavier. But marching was the only way the ordinary footsoldier could travel. The distances they had to cover and the fierce extremes of the Peninsular climate made it a harsh challenge. Only a few officers could afford a mount. Most men marched on foot for days, carrying all their heavy gear. ‘The weight each man had to carry was tremendous in addition to heavy knapsacks: there were their muskets and accoutrements, seventy rounds of ammunition, a blanket, a mess kettle and wooden canteen.’ John Dobbs, an Irishman from Dublin, also had what he called a ‘tin tot’, a small container which he and his mates packed with their knife and fork. ‘The tot was in constant requisition: on getting up it was paraded with water to wash my mouth; at breakfast it answered for a teacup, on the march for drinking out of, at dinner for soup, after dinner, for rum, punch or wine.’
Central Portugal
Wellesley’s new army had its first clash with the French just south of Oporto. On 10 and 11 May his cavalry and footsoldiers came up against a 4,000-str
ong advance guard of French infantry and some cavalry. William Tomkinson was riding with the light dragoons, who were ideally equipped to tackle scouting and other challenges on the fringes of the main action as their horses and swords were less weighty than the ones carried by the heavy cavalry. They quickly scattered the French cavalry outposts on 10 May, but on the 11th Tomkinson was part of a squadron charging massed ranks of infantry. He suddenly found himself unable to hold his reins as both his arms were disabled by musket fire. Within moments his horse ran on to a French bayonet, turned away and galloped off. It passed under a low vine tree that hit Tomkinson on the head and knocked him to the ground. Soon after he had recovered consciousness some allied German infantry came up ‘and began to plunder me …’. Another British soldier approached and managed to persuade the Germans to stop, and Tomkinson was finally rescued from the battlefield by a surgeon who cut off his clothes and dressed his wounds. He had one musket shot in the neck, and two others in each arm as well as a bayonet wound. He spent several days in pain, but the wounds healed and what a surgeon thought was a musket ball buried in his left arm turned out to be a button torn away from his chest and embedded in his flesh.
