by Peter Snow
The suffering on the battlefield of Fuentes d’Oñoro went on long after the fighting was over. Kincaid spent the night manning a sentry post in the village. He found a wounded Highlander sergeant lying there. ‘A ball had passed through the back part of his head, from which the brain was oozing, and his only sign of life was a convulsive hiccough every two or three seconds.’ When Kincaid woke up the next morning, the sergeant was dead.
Grattan came across a makeshift hospital full of dreadfully wounded soldiers. ‘Their limbs were swollen to an enormous size … Their ghastly countenances presented a dismal sight. The streams of gore, which had trickled down their cheeks, were quite hardened with the sun … their eyes were sunk and fixed … they sat, silent and statue-like, waiting for their turn to be carried to the amputating tables.’ A little further on were the surgeons, stripped to their shirts and covered with blood. A number of doors had been ripped off their hinges to serve as amputating tables, and ‘to the right and left were arms and legs, flung here and there, without distinction …’ Grattan was asked by a doctor to hold down a man while his thigh was cut off. ‘The operation was the most shocking sight I have ever witnessed: it lasted nearly half an hour but his life was saved.’ Outside Grattan saw flocks of vultures hovering. He swore he would never visit such a place again.
Soon after the Battle of Fuentes d’Oñoro, Wellington was shaving when one of his officers burst in and told him that the French were leaving. The Commander in Chief removed his razor from his chin for an instant: ‘Ay, I thought they meant to be off,’ he said coolly, and then got back to his shave. Wellington’s sangfroid was characteristic, but in truth the French retreat was scarcely unexpected. The French army, gravely mauled, had little choice but to retire to Spain. Masséna managed to get a message to the garrison commander in Almeida, General Brennier. He told him the fortress could not be saved: he should destroy it and make his escape.
But Wellington was determined that Brennier and his garrison should not be allowed to escape. The fortress was now more or less at his mercy: he gave orders for all roads and bridges leading into Spain across the River Águeda to be barred – particularly one at a spot called Barba de Puerco. This would deny the garrison supplies from Spain and block any escape. All this was to be the responsibility of General Esrkine, who had already let Wellington down badly when he was deputising for Craufurd at Sabugal. On receipt of Wellington’s order to guard the bridge at Barba de Puerco, Erskine wrote out an instruction to Colonel Bevan, the battalion commander in the area, but forgot to give it to him. And when he finally did, Bevan in turn waited till he had had a good night’s sleep before setting off. Brennier and his surviving men fled across the bridge in the small hours before Bevan arrived.
Wellington was apoplectic. ‘I have never been so much distressed by any military event as by the escape of even a man of them,’ Wellington wrote to London. In words strikingly like Napoleon’s after the Battle of Talavera, he ended the letter expressing contempt for just about all his other commanders: ‘I am obliged to be everywhere, and if absent from any operation, something goes wrong.’ He told his brother William: ‘They had about 13,000 men to watch 1,400. There they were all sleeping in their spurs even: but the French got off. I begin to be of opinion that there is nothing on earth as stupid as a gallant officer.’ The unhappy Colonel Bevan was later summoned before a court martial. Overcome with shame and resentment at being made the scapegoat, he blew his brains out. As for ‘drunken old’ General Erskine, as Schaumann called him, he escaped formal responsibility for Almeida, but he was declared insane a year later and relieved of his command. He committed suicide in Lisbon in 1813.
Brennier’s escape took some of the shine off the news of the victory at Fuentes d’Oñoro when it reached London. But it was soon recognised that Wellington had made a strategic breakthrough. Portugal was secure, provided that Wellington now moved against the two great frontier fortresses just inside Spain, Ciudad Rodrigo which commanded the northern route, and Badajoz which stood guard over the southern gateway. These two strongholds commanded the two main roads between Portugal and Madrid. As long as the French held them, Portugal would remain under threat. If Wellington could capture them, the road to Madrid would be open. He determined to tackle them both as soon as possible.
Marshal Beresford was already besieging Badajoz. On 16 May 1811 he had to fight the Battle of Albuera with Marshal Soult, who had marched up from the south to relieve the fortress. It was a victory but a bloody and expensive one: the allies lost 6,000 men, the French 7,000. When Wellington arrived from the north after the battle and visited a military hospital, he told the wounded of the 29th, whose regiment had fought so valiantly at Roliça, Vimeiro and Talavera: ‘Old 29th, I am sorry to see so many of you here.’ They replied, ‘My lord, if you had been with us there would not have been so many of us here.’ Beresford wrote a very downbeat despatch about the battle and the bloodshed. But Wellington insisted that Albuera should be represented as a victory. ‘If it had not been for me,’ he said, ‘they would have written a whining report upon it, which would have driven the people in England mad … I prevented that.’ Wellington still had to keep his detractors, whom he called the ‘Croakers’, at bay by claiming that every step was leading slowly but inevitably to final victory. What mattered was that Beresford had sent Soult packing, and Wellington could now turn to the two most critical sieges of the Peninsular War, Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajoz.
His problem was that he did not have siege artillery big enough to batter down the walls of the two great fortresses. Acquiring the necessary siege train was a massive operation. Wellington knew it was essential and planned it in meticulous detail. He would start with Ciudad Rodrigo and he ordered the guns and ammunition to be shipped from Lisbon to Oporto and then as far as possible up the River Douro; then they would be transported overland. The siege train would be hauled ‘by 384 pairs of bullocks to Trancoso. The stores, that is to say, 350 rounds for each 18 pounder and 24 pounder gun, and 160 rounds for each 10 inch mortar, to be removed to Trancoso, on 892 country carts.’ The core of the siege train would be thirty-four huge twenty-four-pounder guns. They and another thirty smaller guns and 1,800 barrels of powder would be lugged across country to Ciudad Rodrigo with the rest of the heavy equipment. And superintending the operation would be the man who was to earn himself an eminent place in the history of the Royal Artillery, Alexander Dickson, then a thirty-four-year-old major, soon to command all the gunners in the Peninsula. His artillerymen would be backed up by no fewer than a thousand militiamen and 300 Portuguese soldiers. Wellington reckoned the whole laborious process would take sixty-four days. It took longer. The siege did not really begin until the New Year, although there were several important skirmishes and manoeuvres before that.
Napoleon had already told Masséna he was sacked. He now appointed Auguste Marmont to succeed him. Marmont was one of Napoleon’s most trusty associates, who had campaigned with him in Italy and Germany. He did his best to foil Wellington’s encirclement of Ciudad Rodrigo. The allies had a narrow escape at El Bodón, four miles south of the fortress city, on 24 September. Joseph Donaldson’s Scots and other units of the 3rd Division were caught in the open by a large force of Marmont’s infantry and cavalry. Only by retreating in quickly formed squares did the redoubtable Thomas Picton manage to guide them to safety. ‘We were much annoyed by shot and shell from … French artillery … some of which falling on our squares did great mischief, killing and wounding several of our men, and blowing up our ammunition.’ But Picton showed ‘coolness and intrepidity’ in steering them back to join the rest of the army. ‘Never mind the French,’ he said, ‘mind your regiment: if the fellows come here, we will give them a warm reception.’
Wellington had actually asked Craufurd to take his Light Division to help support Picton’s fighting withdrawal but Craufurd had once again sailed close to the wind, ignoring his chief’s command to cover the retreat. Picton was none too pleased, nor was Wellington. Craufurd,
instead of reinforcing Picton, had kept his troops out in the front line in a rather exposed position. When they next met, Wellington, with more than a hint of sarcasm, said, ‘I am glad to see you safe, Craufurd.’ ‘Oh I was in no danger, I assure you,’ responded Craufurd. To which Wellington shot back, ‘But I was from your conduct.’ Craufurd rode off saying, ‘He is damned crusty today.’
El Bodón was a dangerous moment, but the rest of 1811 passed away without any major advance on either side. After two abortive attempts to besiege the two fortress towns, Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajoz, Wellington – with his usual strategic caution – decided to wait. Some felt he was being too circumspect. Craufurd made little secret of his view that Wellington was not ready enough to take risks for victory. And this sentiment was echoed even by the loyal Alexander Gordon, who told his brother that he was disappointed Wellington didn’t have a go at the French, whose armies he would probably never find ‘weaker or more dispersed than they are at present’.
But Wellington, confident as ever in his own judgement, was determined to avoid a major move into Spain until he had the siege equipment ready. Time was on his side too: his allies, the Spanish guerrillas, were nibbling away at French strength and morale, and Napoleon’s strategic ambitions were shifting again. His target now was Moscow, and he decided to recall some key units from the Peninsula for his planned invasion of Russia in 1812.
8
Now, lads, for the breach
Ciudad Rodrigo, 1812
IT WAS A bitterly cold winter. Even worse, the British army’s winter quarters were in a comparatively infertile area on the Spanish–Portuguese border. In spite of Wellington’s strict orders to respect the property of the local population, soldiers were soon snatching local farmers’ sheep. William Grattan observed that the farmers knew very well that ‘wolves were not sufficiently numerous in that part of the country to effect such havoc’. The thieves often escaped undetected and shared the tasty lamb with their companions. The ones who were caught stealing were flogged, and Picton tried to stop the thieving by insisting on a roll call of each of his companies at different times each night. ‘Black Bob’ Craufurd, never shy about complaining, blamed the army’s lack of supplies for the large number of desertions his Light Division was suffering. This only worsened relations between Wellington and his most prickly general. Wellington prided himself on keeping his men supplied and was naturally piqued that Craufurd didn’t appreciate it. Craufurd had already shown himself unscrupulously ready to go to any lengths to secure food for his men. He seized some church plate ‘with a view to purchasing some corn … It had some effect in procuring supplies, as it convinced the priests that the distress was not feigned.’
It was a meagre Christmas that year. Lieutenant Robert Knowles, a twenty-one-year-old fusilier from Bolton in Lancashire, spent five days in one camp where they had to search a wood for acorns in place of bread. Accommodation was scarce too. ‘In this starving state we had only twenty cottages to quarter seven hundred men. I say very few men in England would envy our situation.’ It wasn’t just hunger which wasted the army: it was disease as well. Sanitary conditions in the camps were crude, the water often polluted. Wellington reported that all the soldiers who had recently arrived from England ‘and vast numbers of officers were attacked by fever, not of a very violent description, but they were rendered unable to perform any duty, and those who recovered relapsed upon making any exertions’.
But none of this stopped Wellington from devoting any free time that winter to his favourite distraction – hunting. He now had a full pack of foxhounds, and would hunt on nearly every fine day. He put a huntsman named Crane in charge of his hounds, and Crane proved so competent that Wellington kept him on after the war to manage the pack at his house at Stratfield Saye in Hampshire. The Commander in Chief would invite others to join him for the chase. John Kincaid reckoned that Wellington found these outings useful because ‘it gave him an opportunity of seeing and conversing with the officers of the different departments, and other individuals … and the pursuits of that manly exercise too gave him a better insight into the characters of the individuals under him …’ August Schaumann often used to meet Wellington on the hunt ‘with his entourage and a magnificent pack of English hounds … On these occasions he is said to have been in the best of spirits, genial and sans cérémonie; in fact just like a genuine country squire and fox-hunter … how different was his demeanour on a day of battle: then he seemed like an angry God under whose threatening glance everyone trembled.’
Wellington had other ways of mixing with the men who mattered most to him. He often packed his dinner table with local dignitaries as well as his staff and other officers. If he was in jovial mood, the occasion would be marked by his loud guffaw. They would drink the best French wine, given him by Spanish guerrilla chiefs who had managed to raid a French convoy. Lieutenant Thomas Browne was a frequent guest: ‘The cheerfulness or gloom of our commander’s table depended much on news which he received from England, or reports from the different divisions of his army.’ Browne recalled many occasions ‘when scarce anyone dare open his mouth except to take his dinner, and other times when the conversation was constant and general, and Lord Wellington himself the most playful of the party’. Occasionally Wellington would throw a ball and entertain local people. If there were not enough women guests, the officers would dance with each other.
Wellington’s headquarters always had an informal air to it. When he wasn’t staying in quarters, his staff pitched a marquee for him big enough, according to his cook, James Thornton, to serve ‘as a sitting and dining room’. Wellington’s bedroom was a smaller tent inside the marquee with a sentry at the entrance. Thornton’s kitchen was a tarpaulin resting on poles. They threw a mound of earth around it and cut niches where they could make fires and boil saucepans and ‘a larger niche cut out for roasting’. Wellington wasn’t that impressed with Thornton’s cooking skills: General Lowry Cole, he reckoned, had ‘the best dinners, Hill the next best, and mine are no great things and Beresford’s and Picton’s are very bad indeed’. Wellington rose each day at 6 a.m. He was busy writing letters, orders and despatches till nine o’clock when he had breakfast. The morning was taken up with meetings with key colleagues. He spent the afternoon riding. After dinner in the early evening, he was back at work by 9 p.m. writing and reading until he went to bed at midnight.
Wellington had no hankering for home that winter or any winter. He had a job to do and he would do it. He took not a day’s home leave between the spring of 1809 and the summer of 1814. He had no urge to see Kitty, his wife, pining for him nervously in Britain, troubled by her failure to excite him and by her own feeling of inadequacy. He had little but contempt for her, and this only added to his disdain for officers who asked for home leave. Some of them had what he saw as lame excuses like a bout of rheumatism or family sickness back in England.
And for all the social life of headquarters, Wellington was always focused and ready for action. He had a small iron bedstead in his quarters, covered with Russian leather, and one pillow. If he suspected that the enemy might be on the move, Thomas Browne noted, Wellington would sleep ‘in his clothes with his boots near him, ready to put on and his cloak thrown round him. His horse and that of his orderly dragoon were always ready saddled.’ The boots known as Wellingtons were ‘of his own invention and outside he used often to wear mudguards of strong leather’.
There was not a whiff of flamboyance about Wellington’s headquarters here or anywhere else during his six years in the Peninsula. He had no time for the vain frippery and extravagance of other great commanders. The atmosphere was always serious, almost Spartan. ‘There was no throng of scented staff officers with plumed hats, orders and stars, no main guard, no crowd of contractors, actors, valets, cooks, mistresses, equipages … as there is at French or Russian headquarters,’ wrote August Schaumann, ‘just a few aides de camp, who went about the streets alone and in their overcoats, a few guides, and small staff g
uard: that was all.’ Wellington was not an approachable figure adored by his men like Rowland ‘Daddy’ Hill. But he commanded almost universal respect. And modest though his dress may have been, he was always recognisable. He had a ‘remarkable cast of feature, which made him ever distinguishable, at an almost incredible distance’.
He also resented the fact that he was occasionally landed by the high command in London with officers whose patronage by the Prince Regent or the Duke of York gave them an arrogance he found insufferable. One of them was Colquhoun Grant, a tall black-whiskered general who wore an enormous three-cornered hat with a long fluttering feather. He was the Prince Regent’s protégé. ‘The commander-in-chief hated these puffed up favourites,’ observed Schaumann. Wellington himself declared that he did not care too much how an officer or soldier dressed ‘as long as he is forced to keep himself clean and smart as a soldier ought to be’.
One of Wellington’s close-knit team, who had been good friends with Fred Ponsonby and William Tomkinson, was another light dragoon, Major Charles Cocks. He had made the effort to learn Spanish before his posting to the Peninsula and Wellington used him as his eyes and ears, absorbing information about French movements from Spanish guerrillas and local people. He was a frequent guest at Wellington’s table and leaped at any chance of a party: ‘I borrow two or three clarinets and a tambourine from some neighbouring infantry regiment and set the girls dancing all night.’ He fell for one of them, ‘a little Portuguese 16 year old with eyes black as jet, lips ripe as peaches and teeth as white as ivory and limbs for the Venus de Medici’. When she suggested marriage, he said he wasn’t ready for it, but when she then left him, he was shattered: ‘Her departure has aroused feelings I thought my emotions had forgot. I could kill her myself and everyone I meet.’ By this time she was in the arms of that young rascal August Schaumann, who had even less intention of marrying her. His journal is full of accounts of the conquests he claims he made in many a Peninsular village.
