least likely to be attacked, was held by Blake’s 12,000 men. Having
encamped anyhow on the hillside, when they arrived at midnight, they
had to be collected and rearranged with much loss of time after
morning broke. Indeed, they had formed their line only about an hour
before the battle began. The three infantry divisions of Lardizabal,
Ballasteros, and Zayas were arranged in succession from left to right,
each with one brigade in first and one in second line. The 1,100
horse of Loy were out on the extreme right, corresponding to Otway’s
Portuguese on the extreme left. Of the rest of the allied cavalry, De
Grey’s 700 heavy dragoons and 600 horse of Castaños’s Estremaduran
force, under Penne Villemur, were in reserve near Cole’s 4th Division.
The 13th Light Dragoons, separated from the other two British
regiments, were watching the course of the Albuera from the bridge
upwards, in front of Blake’s line.
Soult had come prepared to fight on the morrow, as soon as his infantry
should arrive on the field. At nightfall only one brigade of them was
up. The main body had bivouacked at Santa Marta, from whence they broke
up before dawn and marched eleven miles to the battlefield. Werlé’s
reserve, forming the tail of the column, was not closed up till seven
or eight o’clock in the morning. The Marshal was still under the
impression that Blake had not yet arrived, and that Beresford could
not have more than 20,000 men in line opposite him[480]. It is one of
the ironies of history to read in his dispatch that his great flank
attack, which so much surprised Beresford, and caused so much confusion
in the allied army at the commencement of the action, was made with the
intention of cutting in between Beresford and Blake, whom he believed
to be still on the march from the direction of Almendral, some miles
to the south. The Spanish army, having arrived after dark, had never
been seen; and at Beresford’s request Blake had ranged it behind the
sky-line on the crest, so that nothing was visible save Loy’s horse far
on the right. Soult thought these were Penne Villemur’s squadrons,
belonging to Castaños, which had been accompanying the British cavalry
for some days.
[480] In his dispatch to Berthier, written before leaving
Seville, he spoke confidently of cutting in ahead of Blake,
and surmised that the latter would find himself in a very
compromising position, when he arrived in southern Estremadura,
on learning that Beresford had already been driven across the
Guadiana. On the 15th spies brought him the statement that Blake
was timed to join Beresford only on the 17th. His battle-dispatch
distinctly says that his first news of the junction having
already taken place was got from prisoners during the course of
the action.
The Marshal could make out very little of his enemy’s force or
position. All that could be guessed was that Otway’s and Loy’s cavalry,
both well visible, covered the two ends of the line. Soult’s scheme of
attack was ingenious, though founded on an utterly wrong hypothesis.
He resolved to demonstrate with one infantry and one cavalry brigade
against the village of Albuera, so as to attract his enemy’s attention
to his centre, while carrying the rest of his army far to the left,
under cover of the woods and the low hill between the Nogales and
Chicapierna brooks, to a point from which they could turn Beresford’s
right, by crossing the two streams and ascending the plateau somewhere
beyond the point where Loy’s cavalry were visible.
The details of the execution of this plan were very well worked out.
Godinot’s brigade (the 3,500 muskets of the 12th Léger and 51st
Ligne) marched upon Albuera, flanked by Briche’s light cavalry, and
supported by the fire of two batteries. They became at once hotly
engaged with Alten’s German battalions, and with two battalions of
Spaniards whom Blake sent down to give the village flank support. A
Portuguese battery above the village swept the approaches to the bridge
very effectively[481]. Meanwhile, on Godinot’s left, Soult showed two
brigades of dragoons and Werlé’s strong brigade of 6,000 men drawn
up on the edge of the wood, and apparently about to attack Blake’s
line in front. But deep in the olives to the left the two divisions
of the 5th Corps, Girard and Gazan, were executing a circular sweep,
with a cavalry brigade in front of them, quite out of sight. They were
covered not only by the trees but by the height between the Nogales and
Chicapierna brooks.
[481] The battery was that of Captain Arriaga.
Beresford and Blake prepared to resist an attack on their centre and
right, and felt reasonably confident of giving a good account of
themselves. But the frontal attack seemed somehow to hang fire, and
suddenly a new development came: four regiments of French cavalry, far
to the right, galloped out of the woods, across the two brooks, and up
the slopes far beyond Beresford’s right. Loy’s Spanish cavalry, who
lay in that direction, naturally gave way before them. Immediately
afterwards the head of a long infantry column came marching up from
the same point, making for the heights at a place some way beyond
Blake’s extreme right. It is curious to note that they did not aim at
attacking Blake’s actual flank, but rather at getting on top of the
heights beyond him, so as to be able to move against him on the level
of the plateau, without having to climb the hill in face of opposition.
Beresford rode hastily along the line to meet Blake, and requested him
to deal with this unexpected flank attack by drawing off one of his
two lines, and placing it at right angles to the original position,
across the summit of the heights. He himself would take care of the
frontal attack. Blake promised to do this, but sent only one brigade
of Zayas’s division, four battalions, and his only battery, to execute
the required movement. He was still not convinced that the front
attack might not be the main one. Beresford meanwhile went back to his
own troops, to direct Stewart’s division to prepare to support the
Spaniards when necessary, and Lumley’s cavalry to move off to join Loy
on the extreme right.
The next half-hour served to develop the whole face of the battle
in its second aspect. The French cavalry at the head of the turning
column spread themselves out on the rolling plateau to the west of the
heights so as to flank their infantry. The 5th Corps formed itself in
a column of extraordinary depth on the undulating summit of the ridge,
and began to move on toward Blake’s flank. The responsibility for
the order of battle adopted must apparently be laid on the shoulders
of Girard, the senior division-commander, who was placed that day at
the head of the whole corps; Latour-Maubourg, who had led it during
the last two months, had been taken away to assume general charge of
the cavalry. Girard, as it seems, intended to beat down the hastily
formed line of defence, which the Spaniards were opposing to him, by
the impetus of an immensely heavy column. His force consisted of two
divisions, each of two brigades, and each brigade composed of from four
to six battalions[482]. I had long sought for an exact description of
his array, of which the French historians and Soult’s dispatch only
say that it was a _colonne serrée de bataillons_. At last I found the
required information in the Paris archives[483], in the shape of an
anonymous criticism on Soult’s operations, drawn up (apparently for
Napoleon’s eye) by some officer who had been set to write a report on
the causes of the loss of the battle.
[482] The difference in strength was caused by the fact that
two brigades had contributed two, and one other brigade one,
battalion each to the garrison of Badajoz.
[483] Those at the War Ministry, not the _Archives Nationales_.
This document says that ‘the line of attack was formed by a brigade in
column of attack [i. e. a column formed of four battalions in column
of double companies, one battalion behind the other]. To the right and
left the front line was in a mixed formation, that is to say, on each
side of the central column was a battalion deployed in line, and on
each of the two outer sides of the deployed battalions was a battalion
or a regiment in column, so that at each end the line was composed of
a column ready to form square, in case the hostile cavalry should try
to fall upon one of our flanks--which was hardly likely, since our own
cavalry was immensely superior to it in number.’
This formation disposed of the nine battalions of Girard’s division,
which, as we see, advanced with a front consisting of three battalions
in column and two in line. Gazan’s, the 2nd Division of the corps,
followed very close behind Girard, the four regiments each in column
with their two (or three) battalions one behind the other. The 2nd
Division had been intended to attack as an independent supporting line,
but ultimately worked up so close to the 1st Division that it could not
easily be drawn off or disentangled, and to the Allies the whole 8,400
men looked like one vast column, with a front of about 500 men only,
which, allowing for battalion intervals, just stretched across the top
level of the heights, which is here about 700 yards broad.
Three batteries of field artillery belonging to the 5th Corps
accompanied the 1st Division; a fourth, of horse artillery, was with
the cavalry which covered the left flank of the column. Two more were
in company with Werlé’s brigade. The remaining two stopped with Godinot
opposite Albuera.
When Blake realized the strength of the turning force, he began to
detach more troops from his front line to strengthen Zayas, whose
four battalions would obviously be no more than a mouthful for the
5th Corps. They went in haste, four battalions from Ballasteros, two
from Lardizabal, but failed to reach Zayas before the fighting began.
Meanwhile a majestic movement changed the whole aspect of the French
front. The two brigades of dragoons which had hitherto formed the
French right-centre wheeled into column of squadrons, and galloped
off in beautiful order along the side of the Albuera brook till they
reached the 5th Corps; passing behind it they joined the cavalry on its
left, which now became 3,500 strong. Latour-Maubourg was with them in
person. At the same moment Werlé’s 6,000 infantry performed a slower
and shorter circular march and joined the rear of the 5th Corps, to
which they now acted as a reserve. Thus Soult had all his infantry
save Godinot’s brigade of 3,500 men, and all his cavalry save Briche’s
two regiment of light horse, 550 sabres, massed opposite Blake’s new
‘refused’ right flank.
The sight of this sweep to the south on the part of the French
caused Beresford to make a complete change in his disposition. The
whole 2nd Division, one brigade following the other, in the order
Colborne-Hoghton-Abercrombie, marched along the top of the heights to
reinforce Zayas. Hamilton’s Portuguese were to move in, to take up the
ground evacuated by the 2nd Division. Lastly, Cole’s 4th Division,
Myers’s British and Harvey’s Portuguese brigades, forming the reserve,
were moved a full mile to the right, and placed behind the English and
Spanish cavalry, facing Latour-Maubourg’s great mass of horse. It was
the sight of these eight solid battalions in column, ready to form
square, which alone prevented the French cavalry general from ordering
a general charge upon the 2,300 allied horse in his front, whom he
outnumbered in the proportion of three to two, and of whom only De
Grey’s 700 sabres were British. For the 13th Light Dragoons, the third
regiment in the field, was covering the other wing of the new front,
down by the Albuera stream.
Zayas’s Spaniards, having a much shorter way to move than the French
turning column, were in line of battle long before the 5th Corps came
up against them. But the reinforcements tardily sent by Blake were
still coming up, and forming on Zayas’s flanks in much confusion, when
the fighting began. Most of them prolonged the line down the slope of
the heights above the Chicapierna brook. Beresford was personally
occupied in posting and aligning them at the moment of the first clash.
Zayas, whose behaviour all through the day was most creditable, had
found a very good point at which to draw up his brigade and battery.
The summit of the heights is not level, but undulating; he had chosen
the deepest dip in their summit, about a mile to the south of Albuera
village, and drew up his small force in line on the hither side of
it, so that the enemy had to attack him slightly uphill. His four
battalions exactly occupied the top of the plateau; the troops under
Ballasteros, which were now coming up, were not on the top, but on the
descending slope towards the stream.
Girard’s two divisions advancing along the summit had a front about
equal to that of Zayas, but four times as deep. Opposite the rest of
the Spanish line, Ballasteros’s battalions, they sent out nothing but
skirmishers. But Girard’s division, with a line of _tirailleurs_ in
front, descended their own side of the dip, and then began to ascend
that occupied by the Spaniards. When they had reached a point on the
gentle up-slope about sixty yards from the Spaniards, the French
_tirailleurs_ cleared off to right and left, and the battalions behind
them began to open up their fire, slowly advancing between each volley.
The musketry was hot, and both sides were falling freely, when the
first British troops arrived on the battle-spot. These were the four
battalions of Colborne’s brigade, at the head of the 2nd Division: the
1/3rd, 2/48th, 2/66th, and 2/31st, counting in that order from right to
left. With them was the divisional commander, William Stewart.
Beresford, in his account of the battle, says that he had intended to
draw up the whole 2nd Division in a single line in support of Zayas,
and to advance with it against the French when all was in order. But
William Stewart, though he had received no order to attack, and had
been only directed to support the Spaniards, took upon himself to
assume the offensive. The position indeed was rather a tempting one:
the enemy was engaged with Zayas on an equal front, and had no flank
guard of any kind within a quarter of a mile. He could obviously be
assailed at great advantage by a force which should pass round and
through Zayas’s right, and place itself perpendicular to Girard’s long
unprotected flank. This movement Stewart took upon himself to execute;
as each of the battalions of the 1st Brigade came up, it was extended
and sent forward, apparently in a sort of échelon, the Buffs leading,
far to the flank, and the 48th and 66th passing actually through
Zayas’s right battalions. But the 31st, the left regiment, had not come
up or deployed when the other three went forward into action[484].
Along with Colborne there was coming up Cleeves’s battery of the King’s
German Legion. The leading four guns got into action, just to Zayas’s
front, at the same moment that the British infantry went forward.
[484] Beresford suggests that Colborne asked Stewart to allow him
to put the right wing of the Buffs into square or column, so as
to protect the flank of the brigade, but that Stewart refused.
Colborne’s short letter on the battle does not say so; but as he
was on very friendly terms with Stewart, he may have refrained
from writing the fact. He only says that the order of attack
adopted was not his, and that he had no responsibility for it.
See Beresford’s _Further Strictures on Napier_, vol. iii. p. 159.
The French column, thus unexpectedly attacked in flank both by
artillery and infantry fire, was naturally thrown into dreadful
confusion. The two battalions in column which formed its left section
faced outwards, and opened a rolling fire three deep, the front rank
kneeling. But they could not stand the volleys poured into them from
a distance of sixty paces, and soon began to break--the men were seen
trying to go to the rear, and the officers beating them back with their
swords. Colborne’s line cheered, and went forward to complete its
victory with the bayonet.
At this moment a dreadful catastrophe occurred: Latour-Maubourg had
been watching the struggle on the hillside before him, and, when he
saw it going badly for his friends, directed his nearest cavalry
regiments, which chanced to be the 1st Lancers of the Vistula and the
2nd Hussars, to charge along the slopes against the exposed outer flank
of Colborne’s brigade. At this moment the morning, which had been fair
at first but had been growing darker every hour, was disturbed by a
blinding shower of rain and hail coming from the north. It is said to
have been largely in consequence of this accident that the approach
of the 800 horsemen was unnoticed by any of the British infantry--but
Colborne’s men were also smothered in their own smoke, and entirely
concentrated on the work before them. At any rate the charge took
the Buffs in flank, rolled them up, and then swept down the back of
the other two battalions, and on to Cleeves’s battery. It is hardly
exaggeration to say that Colborne’s three leading battalions were
annihilated in five minutes. Fifty-eight officers out of 80, 1,190 men
out of 1,568 were slain, wounded, or captured. The number of killed
was out of all proportion to the wounded: in the Buffs there were 212
dead to 234 hurt. This ghastly slaughter is said to have been due to
the fact that the savage Polish lancers not only refused to accept
surrender from the unhappy infantry, but deliberately speared the
wounded as they lay. Nor can I refuse credit to the general statement
of contemporary British authorities after reading the journal of
Major Brooke, commanding the 2/48th, who relates how, after he had
surrendered and was being taken to the rear by two French infantry
soldiers, a Pole rode up to him and deliberately cut him down, after
which the ruffian made his horse trample over him and left him for
dead[485]. In the regimental annals of the 66th two officers are named
as having been wounded by the lance, while already disabled and lying
on the ground[486]. Peninsular tradition tells that the 2nd Division
after Albuera swore to give no quarter to Poles.
[485] I published Major Brooke’s diary in _Blackwood_ for 1908,
with an account of his almost miraculous subsequent escape from
Seville, under the title of ‘A Prisoner of Albuera.’
[486] See _History of the 66th Regiment_ in Cannon’s Series.
But not all the victorious horsemen were so inhumane; 479 prisoners,
many wounded, were driven off to the French lines. The brigade lost
five of its six colours; and the four guns of Cleeves’s battery, which
had accompanied it, were captured. Only one howitzer, however, was
dragged off by the victors--the other three were left behind for want
of horses. The 2/31st, somewhat to the left rear of its comrades, had
time to form square, and beat off without difficulty the rush of the
remnant of the lancers who got so far as its position. Marking too late
the awful catastrophe on his left, General Lumley sent two squadrons
of the 4th Dragoons to fall upon the flank and rear of the Poles--but
they were intercepted by a French hussar regiment which Latour-Maubourg
sent out to cover the retreat of the lancers, and were beaten
back with the loss of both their squadron leaders wounded and taken
prisoners[487].
[487] Napier is quite wrong in saying that this small diversion
was successful, iii. 167. The prisoners were Captains Phillips
and Spedding.
[Illustration: ALBUERA. Nº 1 (About 10 a.m.)
NOTE.--The front line of the French attacking force is not correctly
represented. It consisted of a column of four battalions in the centre,
flanked by two deployed battalions, and with battalions in column
placed outside the two deployed battalions on either side (see p. 380).
In the French reserve there should be only two, not three, battalions
of Grenadiers. The right flank of Zayas’s line is two battalions too
long.]
It may be remarked that the loss of the victorious cavalry was very
heavy, though not out of proportion to their success. The lancers lost
130 men out of 580--the hussars who charged in support of them 70 out
of 300. It was a curious evidence of the headlong nature of their
charge that some scores of the Poles, after passing by and failing to
break the square of the 2/31st, actually rode down the rear of Zayas’s
Spanish line, sweeping aside that general and his staff, and coming
into collision soon after with Beresford and his--the Marshal actually
parried a lance-thrust, and cast the man who dealt it from his saddle,
and his aides-de-camp had to fight for their lives.
At this moment the head of Hoghton’s brigade was just coming up from
the rear--and its leading regiment opening fire on the scattered
lancers shot a great many men of the rear rank of Zayas’s Spaniards
in the back. Notwithstanding this, and to their eternal credit,
the Spaniards did not break, and continued their frontal contest
with Girard’s division, which had not slackened for a moment during
Colborne’s disastrous fight[488].
[488] The writer of the _Strictures on Napier’s History_, vol.
iii, gives as an eye-witness the following anecdote: ‘As a
Spanish soldier in the ranks close to the Marshal was looking
to the rear, a Spanish-Irish officer in that service cried to
him, “To-day is not the day to fly, when you are fighting as the
comrades of the British.” The poor fellow replied, “No, señor,
mas los Ingleses nos tiraron por atrás.”’ The Spanish never at
any moment fired into the British, as Napier asserts. The mistake
was remedied by Beresford’s aide-de-camp Arbuthnot, who rode, at
great risk, along the front of the 29th, and stopped their fire.
There was a distinct pause, however, in the battle after this bloody
episode. The leading division of French infantry had been so much
shaken and driven into disorder, by Colborne’s momentary pressure on
their flank, that the whole column had lost its impetus, and stood
wavering below the Spanish line. Girard, regarding his own division as
practically a spent force, ordered up Gazan’s two brigades to relieve
it. There was fearful confusion while the new columns were thrusting
their way to the front, and they were never properly formed. For the
rest of the battle the two divisions formed a dense mass of 8,000 men,
which looked like one solid clump, without much vestige of regular
formation.
While this confused change of front-line was being carried out by
the French, Beresford had leisure to deploy Hoghton’s brigade in
the rear of Zayas, and Abercrombie’s in rear of Ballasteros, lower
down the slope. He then proceeded to bring them forward to relieve
the Spaniards. The latter, it is due to them to explain, had behaved
extremely well. Beresford bears witness that Zayas’s four battalions,
on the edge of the undulation which marked the front of battle ‘did
not even to the end break their line or quit the field, as Napier
alleges. After having suffered very considerable loss they began to
crowd together in groups, and it was then that the second line (Hoghton
and Abercrombie) was ordered up.’ The losses of the two battalions
of Irlanda, and the 2nd and 4th Spanish Guards, were indeed the best
testimonial to their good service. They had 615 officers and men
killed and wounded out of 2,026 present, over 30 per cent.--all lost
by musketry or artillery fire without a foot of ground having been
yielded, in a close struggle that had lasted over an hour.
With the coming up of Gazan’s division on one side, and of Hoghton’s
and Abercrombie’s brigades on the other, the second stage of the
battle was reached. The clash was confined to the top of the plateau,
the French having only a skirmishing line opposite Abercrombie on
the slope, though the central backbone of the ridge was crowded with
their dense columns. Hence it may be said that for the next half-hour
Hoghton’s men, assisted by the 2/31st, the sole survivors of Colborne’s
brigade alone, were fighting the entire 5th Corps--a line of 1,900 men
two deep opposed to a mass of 8,000 twelve deep, on an equal front.
This was the hardest and most splendid fighting done that day, not
even excepting the glorious advance of the Fusiliers half an hour
later. The three battalions, 29th, 1/48th, and 1/57th, absolutely
died in line[489], without yielding an inch. Their losses speak for
themselves--56 officers and 971 men killed and wounded out of 95
officers and 1,556 men present. The best account of this part of the
action that I know is in the reminiscences of Moyle Sherer of the
1/48th:--
[489] It was here that the 57th earned the well-known nickname
of the Die-hards, from their splendid answer to Colonel Inglis’s
adjuration.
‘When we arrived near the retiring Spaniards, and formed our line to
advance through them towards the enemy, a very noble-looking young
Spanish officer rode up to me, and begged me, with a sort of proud
anxiety, to take notice that his countrymen were ordered to retire,
not flying. Just as our line had entirely cleared the Spaniards, the
smoke of battle was for one moment blown aside, by the slackening of
the fire, and gave to our view the French grenadier caps, their arms,
and the whole aspect of their frowning masses. It was a grand, but a
momentary sight; a heavy atmosphere of smoke enveloped us, and few
objects could be discerned at all--none distinctly. The best soldier
can make no calculation of time, if he be in the heat of an engagement,
but this murderous contest of musketry lasted long. At intervals a
shriek or a groan told that men were falling around me; but it was not
always that the tumult of the contest suffered me to catch individual
sounds. The constant “feeling to the centre” and the gradual diminution
of our front more truly bespoke the havock of death. We were the whole
time progressively advancing upon and shaking the enemy. As we moved
slowly, but ever a little in advance, our own killed and wounded lay
behind us; we arrived among those of the Spaniards who had fallen in
the first onset, then among those of the enemy. At last we were only
twenty yards from their front.’ The brigade had lost nearly two-thirds
of its numbers, the brigadier had been killed; of the three battalion
commanders one was killed and two wounded. The front of the shrinking
line no longer covered that of the French mass before it. But the enemy
was in no condition to profit by the exhaustion of the British. The
fire of the line had, as always, been more effective than that of the
column. The front of the enemy was one deep bank of dead and wounded;
the 5th Corps lost 3,000 men that day, and there can be no doubt that
2,000 of them fell during this murderous exchange of musketry.
Meanwhile it is strange to find that both commanders allowed this duel
of the many against the few, on the plateau, to go on undisturbed.
Soult had still eleven battalions intact in reserve--Werlé’s brigade
and two battalions of _grenadiers réunis_: his cavalry was also doing
nothing, save observe Lumley’s much inferior force. Beresford had still
of intact troops the 4th Division, the three brigades of Hamilton’s
and Collins’s Portuguese, and the 4,000 Spaniards who had remained on
their original position. None of those forces on either side were being
utilized during the crisis of the battle.
The explanation is to be found in the narratives of the two hostile
generals. Soult says in his dispatch to the Emperor, ‘When I ascended
the heights, at the moment that the enemy’s second line advanced and
began to press in our front, I was surprised to notice their great
numbers. Immediately afterwards I learned from a Spanish prisoner that
Blake had already joined Beresford, so that I had 30,000 men to deal
with. The odds were not fair, and I resolved at once to give up my
original project, and to aim at nothing more than retaining the ground
already won.’ The Marshal therefore changed his plan from an offensive
to a defensive battle, and refused to engage his reserves, or to bid
his cavalry charge--a most half-hearted resolve.
As to Beresford, he was anxious to succour Hoghton, but he did not wish
to move the 4th Division, which (he thought) was playing its part in
‘containing’ Latour-Maubourg’s enormous mass of cavalry, and covering
the Valverde and Badajoz road--the line of communication of the allied
army. He sent back instead to order up Hamilton’s Portuguese to the
hilltop--4,800 fresh infantry. But it took a much greater time to bring
them up than Beresford had expected. Some of the aides-de-camp sent
to summon them were wounded on the way; but the main delay was caused
by the fact that Hamilton, instead of taking up Stewart’s original
position, had gone down closer to Albuera, to support Alten’s brigade
at the village against Godinot’s attack, which had become a very fierce
one. It was only after many precious minutes had been wasted that he
was found, and Fonseca’s and Collins’s brigades did not start for half
an hour after the order had been sent to them. Campbell’s brigade
remained to give Alten help, if he should need it.
Meanwhile Beresford was trying to utilize the troops already at hand:
Abercrombie’s brigade was told to wheel inward and attack the right
flank of the 5th Corps, while the Marshal himself tried to move up
Carlos de España’s Spanish brigade to the place where Colborne had
fought so unsuccessfully a little earlier, on the left flank of the
French mass. But this brigade, demoralized relics of the lost army of
the Gebora, refused to face the fire, though the Marshal went to lead
it on in person, seized one colonel by the epaulettes, and tried to
drag him to the front of his battalion. As this brigade only lost 33
men out of 1,700 present, it is clear that it misbehaved.
At last Beresford grew so anxious at the sight of Hoghton’s gallant
brigade shrinking away to nothing, while no succour appeared from the
rear, that he actually sent orders to Alten’s Germans to evacuate
Albuera village, and to come in haste to strengthen the centre. They
were to be relieved by a brigade of the Spaniards who still held the
old position above the village. The legionaries were disentangled from
the village with some difficulty, and the French 16th Léger got into
it before the Spaniards had taken Alten’s place. If Godinot had been
in force, the position here would have been very dangerous; but he had
only six battalions, 3,500 men in all, and was hopelessly outnumbered,
for Hamilton had left Campbell’s Portuguese brigade opposite him, and
3,000 Spaniards came down from the heights. As a matter of fact Alten
never had to go to the front; the crisis on the heights was over before
he got far from the village, and he was sent back to retake it half an
hour after he had given it up. This he accomplished with a loss of 100
men, long after the more important business on the heights was over.
The stroke which ended the battle came from a direction where Beresford
had intended to keep to the defensive, and was delivered by the one
part of his army which he had refused to utilize--the 4th Division.
Cole and his eight battalions had been standing for an hour and a
half supporting the allied cavalry, opposite Maubourg’s threatening
squadrons. He was himself doubting whether he ought not to take a
more active part, and sent an aide-de-camp to Beresford to ask for
further orders[490]; but this officer was badly wounded on the way,
and the message was never delivered. If it had been, the answer would
undoubtedly have been in the negative.
[490] This was an Anglo-Swiss officer, Major Roverea, whose
memoirs have lately been published.
But at this moment there rode up to the 4th Division Henry Hardinge,
then a young Portuguese colonel, and Deputy Quarter-master-general of
the Portuguese army. He had no orders from Beresford, but he took upon
himself to urge Cole to assume the responsibility of advancing, saying
(what was true enough) that Hoghton’s brigade on the heights above
could not hold out much longer, and that there were no British reserves
behind the centre. Cole hesitated for a moment--the proposal that he
should advance across open ground in face of 3,500 French cavalry,
without any adequate support of that arm on his own side, was enough to
make any man think twice. But he had already been pondering over the
move himself, and after a short conference with Lumley, his colleague
in command of the cavalry, determined to risk all.
The 4th Division was ordered to deploy from columns into line, and to
strike obliquely at the French flank. Entirely conscious of the danger
from the twenty-six squadrons of French horse before him, Cole flanked
his deployed battalions with a unit in column at either end: at the
right flank, where Harvey’s Portuguese brigade was drawn out, he placed
a provisional battalion made up of the nine light companies of all his
regiments, British and Portuguese; at the left extremity, on the flank
of his British Fusilier brigade--the two battalions of the 7th, and
the 23rd Royal Welsh Fusiliers--was a good Portuguese unit--Hawkshaw’s
battalion of the Loyal Lusitanian Legion[491]. The line made up 5,000
bayonets--2,000 British, 3,000 Portuguese. The whole of the English
and Spanish cavalry advanced on his flank and rear, Lefebure’s
horse-artillery battery accompanying the extreme right[492].
[491] It appears that the three stray companies from Kemmis’s
absent brigade which had reached the field, were put into the
square at the right flank also.
[492] What exactly passed between Cole and Hardinge is thoroughly
worked out by the correspondence between them printed in the
_United Service Journal_ for 1841.
The sight of this mile of bayonets moving forward showed Soult that
he must fight for his life--there was no drawn battle possible, but
only dire disaster, unless Cole were stopped. Accordingly he told
Latour-Maubourg to charge the Portuguese brigade, while the whole nine
battalions of Werlé’s reserve were sent forward diagonally to protect
the flank of the 5th Corps, moving along the upper slope of the heights
so as to thrust themselves between the Fusilier brigade and the flank
of Girard and Gazan. Soult had now no reserve left except the two
battalions of _grenadiers réunis_, which he held back for the last
chance, on his right rear, keeping up the connexion with Godinot.
The story of what happened at the right end of Cole’s line is simple:
Latour-Maubourg sent four regiments of dragoons at the middle of the
Portuguese brigade, thinking to break it down, as he had done often
before with deployed infantry in Spanish battles. But Harvey’s four
battalions, keeping absolutely steady, delivered a series of volleys
which completely shattered the advance of the charging squadrons. It
was a fine achievement for troops which had never before taken part in
the thick of a battle--for the 11th and 23rd Portuguese Line had not
been engaged at Bussaco or any previous action of importance. Owing to
their excellent behaviour the flank of the British brigade was kept
perfectly safe from cavalry assaults during the next half-hour.
Myers’s three Fusilier battalions, therefore, with the Lusitanian
Legion battalion that guarded their left rear, came into collision with
Werlé’s three regiments without any interference from without. They
were outnumbered by over two to one--2,000 British and 600 Portuguese
against 5,600 French. But Werlé had adopted the same vicious formation
which had already hampered the 5th Corps--his nine battalions were in
three columns of regiments, each with a front of only two companies
and a depth of nine, i. e. he was opposing in each case a front of
about 120 men in the first two ranks, capable of using their muskets,
to a front of about 500--the fact that there were 16 men in depth,
behind the 120 who could fire, was of no profit to him. Three separate
regimental duels followed--the 23rd and the 1st and 2nd battalions of
the 7th Fusiliers each tackled a column, as Blakeney, the colonel of
the last-named unit, tells in his letter[493]. In each case the stress
for the moment was tremendous. Blakeney may be quoted for its general
character:--
[493] Quoted in the Cole-Hardinge correspondence in the _United
Service Journal_ for 1841.
‘From the quantity of smoke,’ he writes, ‘I could perceive very little
but what went on in my own front. The 1st battalion of the 7th closed
with the right column of the French: I moved on and closed with the
second; the 23rd took the third. The men behaved most gloriously,
never losing their rank, and closing to the centre as casualties
occurred. The French faced us at a distance of about thirty or forty
paces. During the closest part of the action I saw their officers
endeavouring to deploy their columns, but all to no purpose. For as
soon as the third of a company got out, they would immediately run
back, to be covered by the front of their column.’ This lasted for some
minutes--possibly twenty--when suddenly the enemy broke, and went up
the hillside in three disorderly clumps, which presently splayed out
into a mass of running men. The Fusiliers followed, still firing, until
they crowned the ridge: the end of their movement was under a terrible
artillery fire from Soult’s reserve batteries, which were used till
the last possible moment to cover the flying infantry. The fusiliers
lost more than half their numbers--1,045 out of 2,015 officers and men.
Their gallant brigadier, Myers, was among the slain. Werlé’s three
regiments had casualties of well over 1,800 out of 5,600 present--a
bigger total but a much smaller percentage--one in three instead of the
victors’ one in two.
The rout of the French reserves would have settled the fate of the
battle in any case; but already it was won on the summit of the plateau
also. For at the same moment when the Fusiliers closed, Abercrombie’s
brigade had wheeled in upon the right of the much-disordered mass that
represented the 5th Corps, and, when they followed up their volleys
with a charge, Girard’s and Gazan’s men ran to the rear along the
heights, leaving Hoghton’s exhausted brigade lying dead in line in
front of them. The fugitives of the 5th Corps mingled with those from
Werlé’s brigade, and all passed the Chicapierna brook in one vast horde.
There was practically no pursuit: Latour-Maubourg threw his squadrons
between the flying mass and the victorious Allies and the British and
Portuguese halted on the heights that they had won. Soult’s last
infantry reserve, the two grenadier battalions, were also drawn out
on the nearer side of the Chicapierna, and suffered severely from the
artillery fire of the Allies, losing 370 men out of 1,000 in twenty
minutes. But Lumley’s cavalry could not meddle with Latour-Maubourg’s
double strength, and it was not till some time had passed that
Beresford brought up three Portuguese brigades in line--Collins,
Fonseca, and Harvey--and finally pushed the enemy over the brook. By
this moment Soult had got nearly all his artillery--forty guns--in
line on the height between the two brooks, and their fire forbade
further progress, unless Beresford were prepared to storm that position
with the Portuguese. He refused to try it, and wisely; for though the
enemy’s infantry were completely out of action, it is a formidable
thing to deliver a frontal attack on six batteries flanked by 3,500
horse.
So finished the fight of Albuera; a drenching rain, similar to that
which had been so deadly to Colborne’s brigade, ended the day, and made
more miserable the lot of the 10,000 wounded who lay scattered over
the hillsides. The British had hardly enough sound men left in half
the battalions to pick up their own bleeding comrades, much less to
bear off the mounds of French wounded, who lay along the slopes of the
gentle dip where the battle had raged hardest. It was two days before
the last of these were gathered in.
That Albuera was the most bloody of all the fights of the Peninsular
War, in proportion to the numbers engaged, everybody knows. But the
exact table of the losses on each side has never, I believe, been fully
worked out. After studying the French returns in the Archives of the
Paris Ministry of War and the Spanish figures at Madrid, no less than
Beresford’s report, we get to the results which I have printed in the
XVth Appendix to this volume.
Summarizing them, we find that the British, including Alten’s German
battalions, had 10,449 men on the field. Their total loss was 206
officers and 3,953 men. Of these 882 were killed, 2,733 wounded, and
544 missing. Of this frightful casualty list no less than five-sixths
belonged to the three brigades of Colborne, Hoghton, and Myers, for
the cavalry and artillery, with Alten’s and Abercrombie’s brigades of
infantry, though all seriously engaged, lost but 618 out of nearly
4,500 men present. The remaining 3,502 casualties all came from the
ranks of the three first-named brigades, whose total strength on the
field was but 5,732. Colborne’s brigade lost, in an instant as it
were, under the charge of the lancers and hussars, seven-tenths of its
numbers, 1,400 men out of 2,000. Of the 600 who were left standing,
nearly half belonged to the 2/31st, the battalion which was not broken
by the cavalry charge, and survived to join in Hoghton’s advance. The
brigades of Hoghton and Myers were not, like Colborne’s, annihilated
in one awful moment of disaster, but used up in continuous fighting
at short musketry range, with an enemy of far superior numbers. The
former (29th, 1/48th, 2/57th) took 1,650 officers and men into the
field, and lost 1,044. The latter (the two battalions of the 7th Royal
Fusiliers and the 1st battalion of the Welsh Fusiliers) had 2,015
combatants present, and lost 1,045. Hoghton’s troops, therefore, lost
five-eighths, Myers’s one-half of their strength, and these were
victorious units which hardly left a single prisoner in the enemy’s
hands, and finally drove their adversaries from the field in spite of a
twofold inequality of numbers. Truly Albuera is the most honourable of
all Peninsular blazons on a regimental flag.
Of the 10,000 Portuguese, only Harvey’s brigade was seriously engaged;
it had over 200 casualties[494] out of the 389 suffered on that day by
troops of that nation, and established a most honourable record by its
defeat of Latour-Maubourg’s dragoons. The other men killed or hurt were
distributed in fives and tens over the battalions of Fonseca, Collins,
and Campbell, which only came under fire in the last stage of the
battle.
[494] Of which no less than 171 were in the battalion of the
Lusitanian Legion which formed Cole’s flank-guard on the left: it
suffered terribly from artillery fire.
The Spaniards returned 1,368 casualties out of 14,000 present, of
which (as we have already seen) no less than 615 were in those four
battalions of Zayas’s division which held out so stubbornly against the
5th Corps, till Hoghton’s men came up to relieve them. Of the rest,
Ballasteros’s and Lardizabal’s divisions, with under 300 casualties
each, had only suffered from skirmishing or distant artillery fire.
The losses of Carlos de España and the cavalry were insignificant.
[Illustration: ALBUERA. Nº 2 (About 11.30 a.m.)
NOTE.--There should be only two, not three, battalions of Grenadiers
placed as reserve behind Girard and Gazan’s troops.]
The French losses can be made out with reasonable certainty after
careful comparison of different returns in the Paris Archives. Soult
had the shamelessness to assert in his dispatch to the Emperor that
he had only 2,800 killed and wounded! But a tardily prepared and
incomplete list drawn up on July 6th gave 6,000 casualties, of whom
900 were missing--wounded prisoners left on the allied position.
Unfortunately this return, on examination, turns out to be far
from satisfactory. Soult gives 262 officers killed, wounded, or
missing, but the regimental returns when compiled show a much higher
figure--359--and cannot possibly be wrong, since the name and rank of
every officer hit is carefully recorded for documentary and official
purposes.[495] But if 262 casualties among officers correspond (as the
return of July 6th states) to 5,744 among the rank and file, then 362
officers hit must imply 7,900 men disabled, and this, we may conclude,
was very near the real figure. Belmas and Lapéne, the most trustworthy
French historians of the campaign, agree in giving 7,000, a thousand
more than Soult conceded in his tardy and incomplete return. This
proportion out of 24,000 men put in the field is sufficiently heavy,
though exceeded so terribly by the 4,150 men lost out of 10,450 among
the British troops. The units which suffered most heavily were the two
divisions of the 5th Corps, which must have lost nearly 4,000 out of
8,400 present; Werlé’s reserve had probably close on 2,000 casualties,
out of 5,600 bayonets; Godinot’s column and the cavalry had very
considerable losses, but were the only troops fit for action next
day. The 5th Corps was absolutely wrecked; in some battalions there
were only three or four officers unhurt, and the losses were similar
to those in Myers’s or Hoghton’s British brigades[496]. Two or three
others had fared comparatively better, having been in the flank or
rear at the time when the desperate musketry duel in the front was in
progress. But the corps as a whole could not have been put in action on
the 17th.
[495] See Appendix XVI.
[496] For details see Appendix XVI.
On the morning of that day each army sullenly formed line on its own
side of the Albuera brook, but made no further movement. Beresford
was prepared to fight another defensive battle, in the unlikely event
of its being forced upon him[497], but was not willing to attack an
enemy hidden behind a screen of woods, and possessed of a superior
and still effective cavalry and artillery. Such an attack must have
been delivered mainly by the Spanish and Portuguese infantry, since of
the British only Abercrombie’s and Alten’s five battalions were fit
for immediate service. The missing brigade of Kemmis arrived during
the day, after a fatiguing march over the Jerumenha bridge, and added
1,400 bayonets more, but even so there would have been only 4,000
British infantry in full fighting trim; the sad relics of Hoghton’s
and Colborne’s brigades were organized into two provisional battalions
of 600 men each, where whole regiments were represented by one, two,
or, at the most, three companies. Myers’s brigade had 1,000 men left,
so was better off, but no general would have dreamed of using any of
these troops for offensive action on the day after the battle. An
attack would have had to be delivered by the 9,000 Portuguese infantry,
backed by the Spaniards and Abercrombie, Alten, and Kemmis. Beresford
refused to try it, even though he knew that Soult’s losses had been
greater than his own, so far as mere numbers went; probably, he argued,
Soult would retire covered by his cavalry and artillery if he were
assailed. Covered by the woods, he could get off as he pleased. But
Soult was certain to retire in any case, as news had now come to hand
that Wellington was coming down to Elvas with two divisions[498], and
might be expected there immediately--he actually arrived on the 19th;
the head of his column had marched on the 14th, and reached Elvas on
the 23rd. To risk anything in order to get Soult on the move a few days
earlier was not worth while.
[497] D’Urban in his diary under the 17th first speaks of an
attack by Soult being possible, and then concludes it impossible;
Kemmis’s arrival he thinks will have cured the Marshal of any
idea of returning to the fight.
[498] His intention to come appears in his letter to Beresford of
May 13th, received May 17th. The statement that the 3rd Division
and other troops had actually started for Estremadura is in his
letter of May 14th, received May 18th. _Wellington Dispatches_,
vii. 549 and 555.
The French marshal was even further than Beresford from the idea of
renewing operations on the 17th; he had shot his bolt and failed--the
battle, so he declared, would never have been fought if he had known
that Blake had joined the British on the night of the 15th. His main
object in keeping his ground for a day was to organize the transport
of a column of 5,000 wounded on to Seville; if he had retired at once,
the greater part of them would have had to be abandoned. As it was,
his transport was used up, and several hundreds of severe cases had
to be left to the mercy of the Allies, in and about the chapel in the
wood of Albuera. Beresford found them there on the morning of the
18th, for Soult commenced his retreat before dawn, some thirty-six
hours after the battle was over. Gazan (himself wounded) and some
2,000 men from the regiments which had been most cut up guarded the
convoy (which included the 500 British prisoners)[499], southward
along the great _chaussée_. Soult himself, with the rest of the army,
now reduced to 14,000 men at the most, retired by a more circuitous
route, by Solana and Fuente del Maestre towards Llerena and the Sierra
Morena. Beresford’s cavalry followed, but was unable to do anything in
face of Latour-Maubourg’s preponderant squadrons. The allied infantry
remained behind to resume the siege of Badajoz; on the 18th Hamilton’s
division and Madden’s cavalry were sent back to invest the place, which
was shut in again at dawn on the 19th, after having been relieved of
the presence of the Allies for only three days (16th-17th-18th May).
General Phillipon had employed this short respite in the useful task
of levelling the allied trenches and batteries outside his works. He
found nothing in them of which he could make booty, save the heavy wood
employed for the gun-platforms before San Cristobal. The more valuable
stores had all been removed to Elvas, the gabions and fascines burned
by the 4th Division before it gave up the investment on the night of
the 15th May.
[499] Of whom more than 200 escaped, and joined their regiments
during the next four days, for their guards were too exhausted to
keep good watch.
That Albuera, with all its slaughter, was a battle in which both sides
committed serious errors is generally acknowledged; but few are the
general actions in which there is nothing to criticize on the part of
the victor--much more of the vanquished. We must, however, protest
against Napier’s sweeping assertion that ‘no general ever gained so
great a battle with so little increase of military reputation as
Marshal Beresford[500]. His triumph was disputed by the very soldiers
who followed his car. Their censures have been reiterated without
change and without abatement to this hour, and a close examination
(while it detects many ill-founded observations and others tainted with
malice) leaves little doubt that the general feeling was right[501].’
Napier then proceeds to argue that Beresford ought to have refused
battle, and retired beyond the Guadiana, that his concentration was
over-tardy, and that, considering the doubtful quality of Blake’s
troops, he was too bold in fighting. His tactical dispositions were
bad; ‘he occupied the position so as to render defeat almost certain’;
he brought up his reserves in a succession of separate attacks, and
hesitated too long to move the 4th Division. ‘Hardinge caused Cole and
Abercrombie to win the victory;’ the guidance of a commanding mind was
nowhere seen.
[500] If any one wants an example of such a battle, he may take
the first great fight of Frederick the Great, who had been driven
ten miles off the battlefield with the wreck of his cavalry when
news came to him that his infantry, in his absence and without
his leadership, had won the battle for him.
[501] _Peninsular War_, iii. p. 175.
Napier was Beresford’s bitter enemy, and it is clear that his
eloquent denunciations of the Marshal were inspired by a personal
animosity which clouded his judgement. His account of Albuera is one
of the finest pieces of military writing in the English language,
but it bristles with mistakes, many of them worked in so as to throw
additional discredit on his enemy’s capacity[502]. One turns naturally
to investigate Wellington’s observations on the fight, made when he had
ridden over the field on May 21st, only five days after the battle. In
one private letter he writes, ‘We had a very good position, and I think
should have gained a complete victory without any material loss, if
the Spaniards could have manœuvred; but unfortunately they cannot.’ In
another he says, ‘The Spanish troops behaved admirably, I understand.
They stood like stocks while both parties were firing into them, but
they were quite immovable, and this was the great cause of all our
losses. After they had lost their position, the natural thing to do
would have been to attack it with the nearest Spanish troops, but these
could not be moved. The British troops [2nd Division] were next, and
they were brought up (and must in such cases always be brought up), and
they suffered accordingly.’
[502] Such as the statement that Zayas had given way before
Colborne arrived at the front, which the evidence of Beresford
himself, D’Urban, Schepeler, Moyle Sherer, and many other
witnesses proves to be quite wrong. Also the tale (p. 167) that
the Spaniards fired into the British (see _Strictures_, pp.
247-8, and Schepeler). Also the statement that Lumley’s cavalry
diversion to help Colborne was successful--when it merely
resulted in the repulse of the two squadrons that made it, with
the loss of their two commanding officers (Captains Spedding and
Phillips) taken prisoners.
An astonishing bit of arithmetic is the note (iii. p. 181) that
on the night of the battle only 1,800 unwounded British infantry
were left standing--the real figures being: Abercrombie, 1,200;
Alten, 1,100; remains of Myers’s brigade, 1,000; remains of
Colborne’s brigade, 600; ditto of Hoghton’s, 600. Total, 4,500.
Napier had apparently forgotten Abercrombie and Alten.
Wellington’s opinion therefore was that Blake’s slowness in guarding
against the flank attack was the real cause of all the trouble.
Considering the gallant way in which Zayas’s four battalions fought,
when once they were in line, it certainly seems that if thrice the
force which that officer was given had been thrown back _en potence_
across the heights, as Beresford desired, at the moment that Soult’s
movement was detected, they would have held their own so effectively
that the British 2nd Division could have come up at leisure, and in
order, to support the Spaniards. As it was, the reinforcements sent
over-late by Blake to help Zayas arrived by driblets, and gave him
little help, falling into a mere _tiraillade_ with the French light
troops on Zayas’s left, instead of engaging in the main battle.
After Blake’s slowness the main cause of loss was William Stewart’s
over-haste. Beresford had given orders that the whole 2nd Division
was to form up in a second line behind Zayas, and go into action
simultaneously, outflanking the massed 5th Corps on either wing.
Stewart, combining over-zeal and want of discipline, attacked with
the first brigade that came up, while the second and the third were
still remote. He also, if several contemporaries are to be trusted,
refused to listen to Colonel Colborne’s request to be allowed to keep
a unit in square or column, to protect the flank of the 1st brigade
when it started out to make its attack[503], and it was the want of
this flank-guard alone which made the charge of the Polish lancers so
effective. As Beresford’s vindicator writes, ‘The Marshal had directed
Sir William Stewart to form the second line; he could not distrust
an officer of his experience, zeal, and knowledge of the service.’
That his subordinate should be struck with sudden battle-fury, and
attack the French flank with one isolated brigade, contrary to his
orders, cannot be imputed as a crime to Beresford, who was in no way
responsible for it. The move, and the disaster that followed within a
few minutes, took place without his knowledge. As he was endeavouring
to put in line the Spanish battalions which were coming up to reinforce
Zayas, he was surprised by being charged in the midst of his staff by
a knot of the lancers, who a minute before had ridden over Colborne’s
men on his right. It is clear that if the three brigades of the 2nd
Division had been properly arranged and put into action simultaneously,
as Beresford intended, the 5th Corps would have been driven from the
heights an hour before it actually yielded. Girard’s division had
already wellnigh exhausted itself upon Zayas’s stubborn resistance,
and it was only the interval in the allied attack, caused by the
destruction of Colborne’s brigade, which permitted Gazan’s troops to
get up into the front line, in such order as they could, in time to
fight Hoghton and Abercrombie. If Stewart’s advance had been made at
the proper time, he would have come upon the two French divisions at
the very moment when they were making their confused change of front.
They could not have resisted the assault, considering the disorder
in which they were mingled. Soult, who had just made up his mind to
discontinue the offensive battle in which he was engaged[504], would
certainly have used Werlé’s reserve only to cover his retreat, and
would have withdrawn from a position which had become desperate,
covered by his cavalry.
[503] _Strictures_, p. 243.
[504] See p. 388 above.
The one point in which Napier’s charges against Beresford have some
foundation is that there was undoubtedly much delay in putting Cole
and the 4th Division into action. This, as we have shown above, was
caused by Beresford’s wish to strike the final blow at the 5th Corps
with Hamilton’s Portuguese, whom he had ordered to the front after
Colborne’s disaster, and who did not make their appearance, partly
because the first aide-de-camp sent for them was wounded on the way,
partly because Hamilton had changed his position, and was not found
at once by later messengers. When it became evident that the delay
was growing dangerous, Beresford would have done well to send Cole
orders to advance at once, and to have directed Abercrombie also
to charge. Napier is right in saying that ‘Hardinge caused Cole to
win the victory,’ for Cole’s advance was made without Beresford’s
orders, and even contrary to his intention, since he had sent for
Alten and the Portuguese to make the final stroke. But while they were
being collected, Hoghton’s brigade had been practically used up, and
there was nothing but Zayas’s reformed but exhausted battalions in
Hoghton’s rear, to form the allied centre. It is true, however, that,
supposing the last relics of the ‘Die-hards’ and their comrades had
finally recoiled, there would have been no push or impetus left in
their opponents of the 5th Corps, who were a spent force, in complete
disorder, and with hardly one man in two left standing. While they were
disentangling themselves for a final effort, Collins’s and Fonseca’s
Portuguese, perfectly trustworthy troops and absolutely fresh, would
have been getting into position. It is practically certain that Soult
would have made no further attempt to go forward. His own dispatch
states that he had abandoned all offensive intentions. This much
Beresford’s advocates may plead; but it remains true that the moral
impression of Albuera would have been very different if the charge of
the Fusilier brigade had never taken place. It was their triumphant
sweeping away of Werlé’s reserve which struck dismay into the enemy.
If it had never occurred, Soult would have retired, foiled indeed, but
in good order, and with two or three thousand fewer casualties than he
actually suffered.
In criticizing the operations of the French, the main point which
strikes us is that Soult stands self-convicted of hesitation and
divided purpose in the crisis of the battle. His attack had been
admirable; the movement which threw four-fifths of his available
force unexpectedly on to Beresford’s flank was beautifully designed
and carried out. But when, in the check and pause that followed the
incident of Colborne’s disaster, he realized (as he himself says) that
he had 30,000 men and not 20,000 to fight, and that ‘the odds were
no longer fair,’ he should have made up his mind either to withdraw
under cover of his splendid cavalry, or else to risk all, and throw
his infantry reserves straight into the fight, before the enemy’s line
was reformed. He did neither, but, as he says, ‘giving up his original
project, aimed at nothing more than retaining the ground already won.’
What use was half a mile of hillside to him, if he had failed to break
the Allies and drive them off the position which covered the road to
Badajoz? He deserved the beating that he got for this extraordinary
resolve.
As to the details of the French tactics, Girard was responsible for the
dense order of the 5th Corps, which told so fatally on his men. But
in arranging them as he did, he was but adopting the method that most
other French generals were wont to use. Accustomed to break through the
lines of Continental armies by the impetus of a solid mass, and not by
musketry fire, he prepared to employ the normal shock-tactics of the
‘column of divisions.’ It may be even noticed that, more enlightened
than many of his comrades, he used the _ordre mixte_ recommended by
Napoleon, in which some battalions in three-deep line were interspersed
among the columns. His array was better than that of Victor at Barrosa
or Talavera, or that of Reynier and Ney at Bussaco. But he had never
met the British line before--this was the first time that the 5th
Corps saw the red-coats--and he did not know the unwelcome truth that
Reille told Napoleon before Waterloo: ‘Sire, l’infanterie anglaise en
duel c’est le diable.’ There was, no doubt, extra confusion caused
by the fact that the 2nd Division of the corps closed up too near to
the first, so that the _passage des lignes_, when it was brought up
to the front with the idea of passing it through the intervals of the
shattered regiments of the van, was even more disorderly than was
necessary. But the crucial mistake, repeated by every French general
throughout the war, was to come on in column at all against the British
line. Girard did no worse than his contemporaries, and the gallant
obstinacy of his troops enabled him to inflict very heavy losses upon
the victors.
Latour-Maubourg has sometimes been accused of making insufficient use
of his great mass of cavalry. But till the last stage of the battle
he had in front of him not merely Lumley’s squadrons, but the whole
4th Division. To attack a force of all arms, in a good position, with
cavalry alone would have been dangerous. If he had failed, the flank
of the 5th Corps would have been laid open in the most disastrous
fashion. Probably he was right to be satisfied in ‘containing’ with his
3,500 horse 7,000 men, 5,000 of them good infantry, belonging to the
enemy. His brilliant stroke at Colborne’s brigade is enough to save his
reputation as a battle-general, though (as we have said before) he was
no strategist. By this alone he had done more for Soult than any other
French officer upon the field.
The real hero, most undoubtedly, of the whole fight was Sir Lowry
Cole, who showed as much moral courage in striking in, on his own
responsibility, at the critical moment, as he did practical skill in
conducting his two brigades against the enemy opposed to him--a most
formidable adversary who showed twenty-six squadrons of cavalry opposed
to one of his wings, and the 5,600 bayonets of Werlé’s infantry opposed
to the other. With Harvey’s Portuguese he drove off the cavalry charge,
with Myers’s Fusiliers he beat to pieces the heavy columns of the
French reserve. It was a great achievement, and the General was worthy
of his soldiers, no less than the soldiers of their General. He was
well seconded by Lumley, who justified in the most splendid way his
sudden appointment to the command of the cavalry of the whole army only
a few hours before the battle.
NOTE
THE result of a four hours’ visit to the field of Albuera, on a very
hot day in April 1907, was to prove to me that Napier had no idea of
its topography, while Beresford in his _Strictures on Colonel Napier’s
History_, 1833, describes it very well. I could see no trace of several
things on which Napier lays stress, especially the ‘ravine’ behind the
British position. Nearly the whole of the field is now arable--it was
covered thickly with small red poppies, when I visited it, in which
four ploughs were cutting long seams, turning up a thin soil of a
chocolate brown hue.
SECTION XXVII
WELLINGTON’S FIRST ESTREMADURAN CAMPAIGN
CHAPTER I
THE SECOND BRITISH SIEGE OF BADAJOZ. MAY-JUNE 1811
The short ten-day campaign of Fuentes de Oñoro had not been without
important results, but it had left the general strategical aspect of
affairs in the Peninsula unaltered. Almeida had fallen, and it had
been demonstrated that the French Army of Portugal was not strong
enough to force back Wellington from the frontier, where he had taken
post. On the other hand, it was equally clear that Wellington was far
too weak to dream of taking the offensive in the valley of the Douro,
or marching on Salamanca. Such a movement would have brought 20,000
men from the Army of the North to the aid of the Army of Portugal,
and the allied army on the northern frontier was barely superior in
numbers to the latter alone, even when the 9th Corps had departed for
Andalusia. To provoke the enemy to concentrate would have been insane;
if he were left alone, however, it was improbable that he would prove
dangerous for many a day. Marmont had to complete the reorganization of
the army which he had just taken over from Masséna; it would be some
months before he could replace the lost cavalry and artillery, fill up
his magazines, and finish the reclothing of his tattered regiments.
Bessières was so much occupied with the guerrilleros that he would not
draw his troops together, unless he were obliged to do so by an advance
of the Allies towards his territory. He had, moreover, to keep covering
forces out to north and west, in order to watch Abadia’s Galician
army, and Longa and Porlier, who still made head against him in the
Cantabrian Mountains. It was probable, therefore, that the French
in Leon and Old Castile would keep quiet for some time unless they
were provoked. Wellington resolved to leave them unmolested, and to
endeavour to strike a blow in the south.
On the day when the battle of Fuentes de Oñoro was fought, Beresford,
with the 20,000 men who had been detached to Estremadura, was, as
Wellington knew, just about to commence the siege of Badajoz. It
was certain that this enterprise would bring Soult and his Army of
Andalusia to the succour of the fortress. The line of conduct which
Beresford was to pursue when Soult should appear had been already
settled--he was to fight if the enemy were weak, to retire behind the
Guadiana if he were strong[505]. But meanwhile it was now possible
to reinforce Beresford with 10,000 men, since Marmont and Bessières
would be out of the game for many weeks. Leaving nearly 30,000 men on
the Dos Casas and the Coa, to protect the Portuguese frontier and to
guard the repairing of Almeida, Wellington could march to join the
Army of Estremadura with the balance of his army. He thought that two
divisions could be spared, and chose the 3rd and the 7th. If he marched
rapidly across the Beira with this force, he might arrive in time to
join Beresford for the battle against Soult which was inevitable. It
might take place south of the Guadiana, if the French Marshal had
delayed his advance, or north of it, if he had come up in great force
and had compelled Beresford to give back toward Elvas, and to abandon
the siege of Badajoz. But in either case Beresford’s army, reinforced
by 10,000 men, would be strong enough to beat Soult. The only possible
contingency to be feared was that the Duke of Dalmatia might abandon
Granada and the Lines before Cadiz, concentrate 50,000 men, and let
Andalusia shift for itself while he marched on Badajoz. Wellington
judged, and rightly, that it was most improbable that he would make
this desperate move, and evacuate three-fourths of his viceroyalty,
in order to make certain of saving Badajoz. Knowing the strength of
Beresford and Castaños, he would come with the 20,000 or 25,000 men
that he could collect without disgarrisoning any points of primary
importance. In such a case, supposing that he came with the higher
figure, Beresford had 20,000 Anglo-Portuguese, 10,000 more were coming
down from the Beira, and there were the Spaniards of Blake and of
Castaños to be taken into consideration. Soult would find himself faced
by 45,000 men, and could not possibly prevent the siege of Badajoz from
proceeding. If the place could be taken promptly, there would be no
time for reinforcements to reach the Marshal from the Army of Portugal
or the Army of the Centre: and should he finally resolve to draw up
further forces from Andalusia, he must abandon either the kingdom
of Granada or the Cadiz lines, or both. To force him to give up his
grasp on either of these points would be a great end in itself, and a
sufficient reward for a successful campaign.
[505] See pp. 280-1.
But everything depended on swift movement and the economy of time.
Should Soult refuse to fight, and resolve to appeal for help to the
other French armies, it was certain that 50,000 men might be gathered
to his aid within a month or five weeks. All the Anglo-Portuguese
troops combined, supposing that every man were drawn in from the north
to join Beresford, would not make up over 60,000 sabres and bayonets.
On the other hand, a junction between the Armies of Andalusia and
Portugal, with aid lent by Bessières and the Army of the Centre, could
certainly produce 80,000 men, perhaps more. Wherefore it might be
argued that if Badajoz could be taken in a month a great success might
be scored. But if the siege were to linger on over that time, the enemy
would be able to concentrate in such force that the enterprise might
become impracticable. The game was worth trying.
Wellington’s dispatches to Lord Liverpool and other correspondents
between the 14th and the 25th of May make it perfectly clear that these
were his views. ‘Fortunately for me,’ he wrote, ‘the French armies have
no communications, and one army has no knowledge of the position or
of the circumstances in which the others are placed, whereas I have a
knowledge of all that passes on all sides. From this knowledge I think
I may draw troops from Beira for my operations against Badajoz. But I
cannot venture further south till I shall get Ciudad Rodrigo, without
exposing all to ruin[506].’ Again, ‘I do not think it possible for me
to undertake more in the south, under existing circumstances, than
the siege of Badajoz. I cannot, by any effort I can make, increase the
British and Portuguese [in that quarter] beyond 30,000 men, to which
the Spanish force may add 8,000 or 10,000 more[507].’ He was perfectly
aware that a concentration against him was possible, but that it would
take a long time to come about. ‘I do not know when Marmont can be
ready to co-operate with Soult; however, as the siege of Badajoz can
be raised with ease and without loss, whenever it may be necessary, I
have thought it best to lose no time, and to adopt every means to get
that place, if I can, before the enemy’s troops can join. If I cannot
get it, I may raise the siege and fight a battle or not, as I may find
most proper, according to the state of our respective forces[508].’ It
is clear, then, that Wellington’s utmost ambition was to take Badajoz,
and that he foresaw that he must take it within a limited time, under
penalty of seeing the scheme fail owing to the concentration of the
enemy. His letters show that he knew that Drouet and the 9th Corps
had started for Andalusia immediately after Fuentes de Oñoro, and in
calculating Soult’s utmost available force in June he takes Drouet into
account[509], though he somewhat under-values his numerical strength.
[506] To Lord Liverpool, May 23.
[507] To Beresford, May 14. The 30,000 total allows for Spencer
and four divisions being left in the North.
[508] To Lord Liverpool, May 24.
[509] To Lord Liverpool, May 23.
The garrison of Almeida had made its escape on the night of May
10th-11th; the French army had drawn back beyond Ciudad Rodrigo,
and dispersed itself into cantonments, on May 12th. As early as the
morning of May 14th the column destined for Estremadura set out upon
its march. It consisted, as has been already mentioned, of the 3rd and
7th Divisions, with the artillery attached to them. For the purpose of
providing cavalry for scouting and exploration, the 2nd Hussars of the
King’s German Legion were attached. This corps was the first cavalry
reinforcement that Wellington had received for more than a year. It
had landed at Lisbon in April[510], and had marched up to Celorico;
from thence it was ordered to strike across country, to join the column
marching for the valley of the Guadiana, and to place itself at the
disposition of Picton, its senior officer. They met at Belmonte, and
went on their southward way in company. The route lay through Castello
Branco, the boat-bridge of Villa Velha, Niza, and Portalegre. Picton
reached Campo Mayor, in the immediate vicinity of Badajoz, on May
24th, having taken ten days only to cross the roughest and most thinly
peopled corner of Portugal. The average of marching had been fifteen
miles a day, an excellent rate when the character of the roads is taken
into consideration.
[510] Apparently on April 10, according to Schwertfeger’s
_History of the German Legion_, i. 329.
[Illustration: THE THIRD DIVISION CROSSING THE TAGUS AT VILLA VELHA,
MAY 20, 1811]
Wellington himself started from Villar Formoso two days after the
departure of the troops, on May 16th, and riding with his accustomed
headlong speed reached Elvas on the afternoon of May 19th[511]. He
had passed Picton between Sabugal and Belmonte. Before quitting the
line of the Agueda, he drew up elaborate instructions for Sir Brent
Spencer, who was left, as usual, in charge of the army on the northern
frontier. The force entrusted to Spencer consisted of the 1st, 5th,
6th, and Light Divisions, Pack’s and Ashworth’s Portuguese brigades,
and the cavalry of Slade, Arentschildt, and Barbaçena, altogether
about 26,000 foot and 1,800 horse. The directions left were much the
same as those which had been issued during Wellington’s earlier visit
to Estremadura in April. ‘It is probable that some time will elapse
before the French army in this part of Spain will be capable of making
any movement against the Allies.’ Yet the unexpected might happen, and
Spencer was told that, while so large a detachment was absent in the
south, he must adopt a purely defensive attitude in the unlikely event
of Marmont’s taking the field against him. For the present he was to
hold the line of the Azava, facing Ciudad Rodrigo, with his advanced
posts. The divisions were to be cantoned between Almeida and Nava de
Aver, so that they could be concentrated in a single day. If the enemy
should advance with a large force, as if intending a serious invasion,
Almeida was to be evacuated, since it would be impossible that the
repairs to its ruined ramparts should have got far enough to render the
place tenable. The army was to fall back, not westward towards Almeida
and Guarda, but southwards, firstly to the position before Alfayates
which had already been marked out in April, then to a second position
at Aldea Velha and Rendo, then to a third beyond the Coa. In case
Marmont should push even further, the line of retreat was to be from
Sabugal to Belmonte, and finally by the mountain road of the Estrada
Nova towards the Zezere. ‘But the strong country between Belmonte and
the Zezere must not be given up in a hurry[512].’ All this was pure
precaution against the improbable: Wellington was convinced, and quite
rightly, that Marmont would be incapable for some weeks, probably for
some months, of any serious offensive action against Portugal. To
invade the Beira he would have to collect a store of provisions such
as the exhausted kingdom of Leon could not possibly give him. His
magazines were known to have been empty after Fuentes de Oñoro, and his
troops had been dispersed because there was no possibility of feeding
them while they were concentrated. Spencer could be in no possible
danger for many a day; so strongly did Wellington feel this, that when
he reached Elvas he wrote back to his lieutenant on May 24th that he
intended to borrow from him Howard’s British and Ashworth’s Portuguese
brigades, and thought that this could be done without any risk. But if,
‘notwithstanding my expectations to the contrary,’ Marmont seemed to be
on the move, the brigades might be stopped[513].
[511] He outrode his own estimate, since according to a letter to
Charles Stuart (_Dispatches_, vii. 572) he had intended not to
reach Elvas till the 21st, ‘unless I see reason on the road to go
a little quicker.’
[512] Memorandum for Spencer, dated May 15th, the night before
Wellington’s departure. _Dispatches_, vii. p. 567.
[513] To Spencer, May 24. _Dispatches_, vii. p. 602.
Just before starting on his ride from Villar Formoso to Elvas
Wellington received Beresford’s dispatches of May 12, which informed
him that Soult (as had been expected) was on the march from Seville
to relieve Badajoz, and that, according to the instructions that had
been given, the allied army of Estremadura would fight him, if he were
not too strong to be meddled with. It was the news that battle was
impending which made the Commander-in-Chief quicken his pace to fifty
miles a day, in hopes that he might be in time to take charge of the
troops in person. He galloped ahead, and on the morning of the 19th
heard, between Niza and Elvas, that there had been a pitched battle
on the 16th, and that Soult had been repulsed. The details met him
at Elvas, where Arbuthnot, Beresford’s aide-de-camp, handed him the
Albuera dispatch. He read it through, and struck out some paragraphs
before sending it on to the Ministry at home. The reason for these
erasures was that he considered that Beresford’s tone was a little too
desponding, and that he had laid too much stress on the terrible loss
of the British troops, and too little on the complete check to Soult’s
designs[514]. He wrote to the Marshal to hearten him up, to tell him
that the result achieved had been worth the cost. ‘You could not be
successful in such an action without a large loss, and we must make up
our mind to affairs of this kind sometimes--or give up the game[515].’
[514] This is mentioned by Wellington himself (Stanhope’s
_Conversations_, p. 90): ‘He could not stand the slaughter
about him and the vast responsibility: the letter was quite in
a desponding tone. It was brought me by Arbuthnot while I was
at dinner at Elvas, and I said, “This won’t do: write me down a
victory.” So the dispatch was altered accordingly.’
[515] Wellington to Beresford, May 19, 4.30 p.m.
With the military situation that he found in existence on May 19th
Wellington professed himself satisfied. Hamilton’s Portuguese division
had reinvested Badajoz on the preceding day. Soult was in full retreat,
with the allied cavalry in pursuit of him. It was uncertain whether he
would fall back on Seville or halt at the line of the Sierra Morena;
but at any rate his bolt was shot: he could give no trouble for some
weeks, and would only become dangerous if he strengthened his army by
calling up Sebastiani and Victor, and evacuating the Cadiz Lines and
Granada. This Wellington rightly believed that he would not think of
doing. He would rather cry for aid to his neighbours, and it would take
a long time for reinforcements to reach him from the Army of Portugal
or from Madrid. There was a month in hand, and Badajoz must be captured
if possible within that space.
The first thing necessary was to push Soult as far back as he would go,
and from the 20th to the 26th Beresford was engaged in following him
up. At first only the cavalry was available for pursuit: Hamilton’s
division had been sent back to Badajoz; the 2nd and 4th were allowed
five days of repose on the battlefield of Albuera. Not only were
they absolutely exhausted, but all their transport was engaged in
the heart-rending task of forwarding to Elvas convoy after convoy
of British wounded. The French, of whom the last were not collected
till three days after the battle, were packed in an extemporized
hospital at Albuera village, where they suffered much for lack of
surgeons. It would have been possible to send Blake’s army to support
the British cavalry if he had possessed provisions, but he reported
that his men were starving, and that he must disperse them to procure
food; accordingly they were sent to Almendral, Barcarrota, and the
neighbouring villages, to gather stores as best they might.
Soult meanwhile gave back slowly, being hampered by his immense convoys
of wounded. On the 20th he retired from Solana to Almendralejo and
Azeuchal, on the 21st to Villafranca and Fuente del Maestre; on the
22nd he was in march for Usagre and Llerena, so that it was evident
that he was retiring on the Sierra Morena by the Llerena and not by the
Monasterio road. It was only on this last day that Beresford’s infantry
were able to start in support of the cavalry advanced guard, which had
been cautiously following on Soult’s track. The Albuera divisions were
sad wrecks of their former selves; the 2nd had but 2,500 bayonets in
its three brigades, the 4th about 2,200 British and 2,500 Portuguese;
Alten’s German brigade was less than 1,000 strong, so that the whole
did not make up much more than 8,000 men. But Blake was requested to
move on Feria and Zafra, parallel to the advance of the British column,
and did so, having collected a few days’ provisions in his cantonments.
The whole force was sufficient to move Soult back, since his troops
were in a despondent humour, and did not amount to more than 13,000 or
14,000 men, for he had been forced to detach a brigade under Gazan to
escort his immense train of wounded back to Seville. But the allied
infantry never came up with the retreating French; by the time that
it had reached Villalba and Fuente del Maestre Soult was at Llerena,
thirty miles ahead.
The last day of his retreat was marked by a vigorous cavalry action,
the most satisfactory of its kind that the British horse in the
Peninsula had been engaged in since the combats of Sahagun and
Benavente. Having reached Llerena, where he intended to stop if he
were allowed, Soult determined to find out what was the force which was
pursuing him, and more especially if it were accompanied by infantry.
He instructed Latour-Maubourg to turn back, to attack the allied
horse, and to drive it in upon its supports. Accordingly the French
cavalry general took the four brigades of Bron, Bouvier des Éclats,
Vinot, and Briche[516], some 3,000 sabres in all, and began to advance
along the high-road. He found in Villa Garcia the enemy’s advanced
vedettes, composed of Penne Villemur’s Spaniards, drove them out, and
pursued them for five miles, till he came to the town of Usagre, where
he caught a glimpse of supports in position. He had run against the
main body of the allied horse, though he could not make out either its
strength or its intentions.
[516] Bron’s brigade was composed of the 4th, 20th, 26th
Dragoons, Bouvier’s of the 14th, 17th, 27th Dragoons, Vinot’s
of the 2nd Hussars and 27th _chasseurs_, Briche’s of the 10th
Hussars and 21st _chasseurs_.
General Lumley, who was thus thrown upon the defensive, had with him
his three original British cavalry regiments (3rd Dragoon Guards,
4th Dragoons, 13th Light Dragoons), four small regiments of Madden’s
and Otway’s Portuguese[517], and a detachment of Penne Villemur’s
Spanish horse under General Loy[518], about 2,200 sabres in all, so
that his position was a dangerous one. But the fighting-ground was
propitious. Usagre lies on the south bank of the stream, which flows in
a well-marked ravine; on the north bank there are two rolling heights a
few hundred yards back from the water, with a definite sky-line. Troops
placed behind them were invisible to an enemy coming up from the town,
and the French, if they wished to attack, would have to defile on a
narrow front, first through the main street of Usagre, and then across
the bridge.
[517] 1st, 5th, 7th, 8th of the Line, only 9 squadrons
altogether, and slightly over 1,000 sabres.
[518] Apparently a squadron each of Borbon and Reyna, the rest of
the Spanish cavalry being on the Monasterio Road. Penne Villemur
was sick at Villafranca. Strength about 300 sabres.
On hearing of Latour-Maubourg’s approach, Lumley sent the 13th
Light Dragoons and Otway’s Portuguese across the ravine to the left
of the town, and Madden’s Portuguese in like manner on the right,
each using a ford which had been previously discovered and sounded.
The heavy dragoons remained facing the town, behind the sky-line,
with Lefebure’s battery, guarding the high-road. Both the flanking
forces reported that the enemy was coming up the road in great
strength--Lumley was told that thirteen regiments had been counted,
though there were really only ten. Wherefore he ordered Otway and
Madden to recross the stream by their fords, which they did without
loss, and to watch these passages, while keeping well under cover
behind the sky-line.
Latour-Maubourg could not make out the force or the intentions of
the Allies; he had seen clearly only the Spanish vedettes which he
had driven out of Usagre; but Madden’s and Otway’s squadrons had
not escaped notice altogether, though they retired early, so that
he was aware that a hostile force of some strength was lying behind
the heights. He therefore resolved not to debouch from Usagre along
the high-road with his main body, across the defile at the bridge,
till he had got a flanking force across the stream, to threaten and
turn Lumley, if he were intending to defend the line along the water.
Briche’s brigade of light horse was told off for this purpose, with
orders to go to the right, down-stream, and to pass the river at the
ford which Otway’s Portuguese had been seen to use in their retreat.
Meanwhile the other three French brigades waited in Usagre, deferring
their advance till the _chasseurs_ should have time to get on Lumley’s
flank.
The two forces did not keep touch. Briche went for a mile along the
river, and found the ford; but Otway was guarding it, and he did
not like to try the passage of a steep ravine in face of an enemy
in position. Wherefore he moved further off, looking for a more
practicable and unguarded crossing; but the banks grew steeper and
steeper as he rode northward, and he found that he was losing time.
He was long absent, and apparently committed the inexcusable fault of
omitting to send any report explaining his long delay. After waiting
for more than an hour Latour-Maubourg became impatient, and fell
into an equally grave military error. Taking it for granted that the
_chasseurs_ must now be in their destined position, he ordered his
division of dragoons to debouche from the town and cross the stream
and the defile. Bron’s brigade led; the two regiments in front, the
4th and 20th, trotted over the bridge, and deployed on the other
side, on an ascending slope, to cover the passage of the remainder
of the division. The third regiment of the brigade, the 26th, was
just crossing the bridge, when suddenly the whole sky-line in front
was covered with a long line of horsemen charging downwards. Lumley
had waited till the propitious moment, and had caught his enemy in a
trap, with one-third of his force across the water, and the remainder
jammed in the defile of bridge and street. The 4th Dragoons charged
Bron straight in front, the 3rd Dragoon Guards took him somewhat in
flank, while Madden’s Portuguese supported on the right, and Penne
Villemur’s Spaniards on the left. The two deployed French regiments
were hurled back on the third, at the bridge-foot, and all three fell
into most lamentable confusion. The Allies penetrated into the mass,
and broke it to pieces, with great slaughter. The survivors, unable to
pass the encumbered bridge, dispersed right and left, far along the
banks of the stream, where they were pursued and hunted down in detail.
Latour-Maubourg could do no more than dismount the leading regiment
of his second brigade and set them to fire from the houses along the
water-side, while four horse artillery guns opened upon the enemy’s
main body. But the guns were promptly silenced by Lefebure’s battery,
which Lumley had put in action on the slope above, and Latour-Maubourg
had to watch the destruction of Bron’s brigade without being able to
give effective help. More than 250 dragoons were killed or wounded,
and 6 officers, including the colonel of the 4th, with 72 men were led
away prisoners[519]. The British loss was insignificant--not twenty
troopers--for the enemy had been caught in a position in which they
could offer no effective resistance. Lumley made no attempt to attack
Usagre town, which would indeed have been insane, and drew off at
leisure with his prisoners. Latour-Maubourg sent to recall Briche, and
remained halted on his own side of the stream till evening.
[519] Lumley in his very modest dispatch (Wellington,
_Supplementary Dispatches_, xiii. pp. 654-6) under-estimates the
damage he had done to the enemy. He states his 78 prisoners, and
notes that 29 French dead had been counted, but only speaks of 50
wounded. There were really over 200. In combats with the _arme
blanche_, the number of killed is always very small compared with
that of the wounded, which here was about 8 to 1--not at all an
unusual proportion in cavalry fights. A good account from the
French side may he found in Picard’s _Histoire de la Cavalerie,
1792-1815_, vol. ii. pp. 315-16.
At Usagre the two armies drew their line of demarcation for nearly
a month. Soult stopped at Llerena, since he found that he was not
to be pressed; his advanced cavalry continued to hold Usagre and
Monasterio, on the two roads from Badajoz and Seville. Beresford, by
Wellington’s orders, did not move further forward: it was not intended
that Andalusia should be invaded, or a second battle with Soult risked.
The cavalry formed a line from Hinojosa to Fuente Cantos, facing the
French, the Anglo-Portuguese forming the left, the Spanish the right
of the screen. Some of Blake’s infantry moved up to Zafra in support,
but the main body remained further to the rear, about Santa Marta and
Barcarrota. The British 2nd and 4th Divisions were placed further
back, at Almendralejo and the neighbouring villages, with the bulk
of Lumley’s cavalry in front of them at Ribera, in support of the
left half of the screen, which its advanced squadrons supplied. On
the 27th May Beresford relinquished the command of the separate army
of Estremadura, which had been merged in a larger unit when the 3rd
and 7th Divisions came up to Campo Mayor on the 24th. Wellington had
announced his intention of assuming permanent charge of the force in
the south, which was henceforth considered as the main army, and the
seat of head quarters, while Spencer’s four divisions on the frontier
of Leon were now to be regarded as the subsidiary force.
In his letters home Wellington spoke of Beresford’s removal from active
command in the field as necessary because of the unsatisfactory state
into which the Portuguese army had fallen during his absence; his
strong and methodical hand had been much missed, and matters of detail
had all gone wrong. But there can be no doubt that this was a secondary
consideration; the real cause of his supersession was that his chief
had not been satisfied with his conduct of the Estremaduran campaign
in March and April. Though there were excuses and explanations to be
found for each one of his individual acts, yet the general effect of
his leadership had not been happy. The best commentary on it was that
every one, from Wellington to the simplest soldier in the ranks, was
delighted to hear that Rowland Hill had landed at Lisbon on May 24,
and was on his way to the front to resume command of the 2nd Division.
He was at once placed in the same position that he had held in 1810, i.
e. entrusted with the command not only of his own division but of the
whole wing of the army which was detached to the south. The force put
at his disposition to observe Soult and cover the leaguer of Badajoz,
consisted of precisely the same units that had formed Beresford’s
Albuera army--with the exception that Hamilton’s and Collins’s
Portuguese had been drawn off to the siege operations. Hill had charge
of the 2nd and 4th Divisions, Alten’s detached German brigade, and
De Grey’s and Madden’s cavalry, the whole about 10,000 strong. When
he arrived at Elvas on May 31st, and then went forward to establish
himself at Almendralejo, Wellington felt a degree of security that he
had not known for months. It was certain that nothing would be risked,
that there would be neither delays nor mistakes, while this kindly,
cheerful, and resolute old soldier, the idol of his troops, who called
him in affection ‘Daddy Hill,’ was in charge of the covering corps.
Meanwhile Wellington himself took the siege operations in hand, and
employed in them the troops he had brought from the Beira, the 3rd
and 7th Divisions, together with Hamilton’s and Collins’s Portuguese.
The whole, including about 700 British and Portuguese artillerymen,
mainly the same companies that had served in Beresford’s siege, made
up about 14,000 men--a force even smaller than that with which Soult
had attacked Badajoz in January; but the French Marshal had had to deal
with a garrison of 9,000 men, while General Phillipon, the resourceful
governor now in charge of the place, had but a little over 3,000--a
difference which made Wellington’s position much more advantageous than
Soult’s had been. The cavalry which had come down from the Beira along
with Picton, the 2nd Hussars of the K. G. L.[520], was sent to join the
rest of the horse, and went to form a new brigade, being added to the
13th Light Dragoons, a regiment hitherto unbrigaded. By June 1st there
was another mounted corps to hand--the 11th Light Dragoons,[521] which
also went to join Lumley, so that the British cavalry in Estremadura
rose from three to six regiments during the summer.
[520] Only two squadrons strong, because the remainder of the
regiment was at Cadiz: it had (as will be remembered) done good
service under Graham at Barrosa.
[521] It arrived by June 1st, according to Mr. Atkinson’s useful
list of Wellington’s divisional organization.
There were two deficiencies, however, which made Wellington’s task in
besieging Badajoz a hard, nay an almost hopeless one. His artillery
material, if not so ludicrously inadequate as that of Beresford during
the first siege, was still utterly insufficient. And to this we must
add that his engineer officers were still both few and unpractised
in their art. They repeated the same mistakes that had been seen in
the early days of May. Of trained rank and file in the engineering
branch there were practically none--only twenty-five ‘royal military
artificers.’ The home authorities apparently grudged sending out to
Portugal men of this small and highly trained corps, and preferred to
keep them in England. It is impossible to speak with patience of the
fact that there was not even one company of them in the Peninsula,
after the war had been going on for three years[522]!
[522] Mulcaster’s company, the first to arrive, reached Spain
some weeks later. By the time of the third siege of Badajoz in
1812 there were so many as 115(!) military artificers available.
It was the miscalculations of the engineers--Colonel Fletcher was
presumably the responsible person, as Wellington’s chief technical
adviser--rather than the deplorable weakness of the artillery
resources--which made the second British siege of Badajoz as disastrous
as the first. Untaught by the experiences of the first week in May,
the engineers advised Wellington to direct his efforts against the two
strongest points in the defences, the rocky hill crowned by the fort
of San Cristobal on one bank of the Guadiana, and the Castle on its
steep slope upon the other. The arguments used seem to have been the
same as before--time being limited, it was necessary to strike at the
most decisive points. If either San Cristobal or the Castle could be
breached and stormed, the rest of the fortress would be dominated and
would become untenable. If, on the other hand, one of the southern
fronts, where the French had made their attack, were to be chosen
as the objective, the Castle and San Cristobal, forming independent
defences, might hold out long after the enceinte had been pierced and
carried. Moreover, it was urged, San Cristobal was an isolated fort, so
placed that it could get no help from the flank fires of other works,
save from a few guns on the Castle; its other neighbour, the fort at
the bridge-head, was too low-lying to be of any help.
Practically the only difference between the engineers’ plans for the
first[523] and the second siege of Badajoz was that in the latter more
attention was paid to the attack on the south side, and the whole force
of the besiegers was not concentrated on San Cristobal, as it had been
in early May. A serious attempt was made to breach the Castle, not a
mere demonstration or false attack. Yet, as matters turned out, all
the stress of the work once more fell upon the San Cristobal front,
where two desperate assaults were made and repulsed, while on the
Castle front matters never got to the point of an attempted storm.
Summing up the siege in the words of D’Urban, Beresford’s chief of
the staff, who watched it ruefully, we can only echo his conclusion
‘that the fact is that the engineers began upon the wrong side[524].’
Two geological peculiarities of the ground were fatal to success: the
first was that on San Cristobal the soil is so shallow--three inches
only on top of the hard rock--that it was impossible to construct
proper trenches. The second was that the Castle hill is composed of
a clay-slate which does not crumble, however much battered, and that
the wall there was simply a facing to the native soil. Its stones
might be battered down, but the hillside stood firm when the stones
had fallen, and remained perpendicular and inaccessible. The latter
fact could not be known to Wellington’s engineers; but the former was
fully within their cognizance, owing to their experience in the first
siege. There can be no doubt that they ought to have selected for
battering the south front--either the point where Soult worked during
February, or still better the walls nearer the river, by the bastion
of San Vincente, where the ground is equally favourable and there is
no flanking external defence like the Pardaleras fort. If every gun
had been concentrated on this section, and every available man set to
trench-work against it, there can be little doubt that Wellington would
have got Badajoz within the scant four weeks that were at his disposal.
[523] Refer back to pp. 283-4 for details.
[524] D’Urban’s diary under June 10th, when the siege was just
developing into an acknowledged failure.
Though the blockade had been resumed on May 18th, the actual siege did
not recommence for some days later, since the troops from the Beira,
who were to conduct it, did not get up till a week had passed. On May
25th Houston’s division arrived from Campo Mayor, and took position on
the heights beyond San Cristobal; they were there joined by the 17th
Portuguese from the garrison of Elvas, and two regiments of Algarve
Militia (Tavira and Lagos) were assigned for transport and convoy
duty between the trenches and Elvas. Picton and the 3rd Division came
up two days later (May 27th), crossed the Guadiana by the ford above
the city, and joined Hamilton’s Portuguese on the southern bank. An
earlier arrival of the Beira divisions would have been of no great
use, since it was only on the 29th that Colonel Alexander Dickson, who
had once more been entrusted with the artillery arrangements, had sent
off his great convoy of guns from Elvas. This time that indefatigable
officer had collected a siege-train twice as large as that which he
had prepared for Beresford four weeks earlier--there were forty-six
guns in all[525] instead of twenty-three. But unhappily the pieces
were the same as those used in the first siege, or their equals in age
and defects. The large majority were the old brass 24-pounders of the
seventeenth century which had already given so much trouble from their
irregularity of calibre, their tendency to droop at the muzzle when
much used, and their tiresome habit of ‘unbushing’ (i. e. blowing out
their vent fitting). Six iron ship-guns, ordered up from Lisbon, only
arrived when the siege was far advanced, and were the sole weapons
of real efficiency with which Dickson was provided. It is clear that
head quarters might have done something in the way of ordering up
better guns early in May, the moment that the first siege had shown
the deficiencies of the Elvas museum of artillery antiquities. The
gunners, like the guns, were about doubled in number since Beresford’s
_fiasco_: there were now over 500 Portuguese, and one company of
British (Raynsford’s), 110 strong, who arrived from Lisbon on the
30th, riding on mules which had been provided at Estremos to give them
a rapid journey. To aid the twenty-one engineers on the spot, eleven
officers from line battalions had been taken on as assistant engineers,
while the twenty-five military artificers had to train 250 rank and
file, selected from the 3rd and 7th Divisions, to act as carpenters,
miners, and sappers. The work of these amateurs was, as might have been
expected, not very satisfactory, and the make of their gabions and
fascines left much to be desired.
[525] 30 brass 24-pounders, 4 16-pounders, 4 ten-inch howitzers,
8 eight-inch ditto, according to Dickson’s letter of May 29.
See his papers, ed. Leslie, p. 394. I follow him rather than
Jones’s _Sieges of the Peninsula_, where they differ, as he is
absolutely contemporary authority, and was the officer in charge
of everything.
On May 29th the siege work began, by the opening up of the old trenches
opposite the Pardaleras fort, which the French had filled in on the day
of Albuera. This was merely done to draw the attention of the garrison
away from the real points of attack, for there was no intention of
approaching the place from the south. It would have been better for the
Allies had this been a genuine operation, and if the Castle and San
Cristobal attacks had been false! It attracted, as was intended, much
notice from the garrison.
On the night of the 30th the serious work began. On the Castle side
1,600 men from the 3rd Division commenced at dusk a long trench, on
the same ground that had been dug over during the first siege, and
three zigzag approaches to it from the rear. This trench, the first
parallel, was no less than 800 yards from the Castle. The attention of
the enemy was so much drawn to other points, and the soil was so soft,
that by daybreak there had been formed a trench 1,100 yards long, with
a parapet three feet high, and a depth of three feet in the ground:
the approaches were also well advanced. On San Cristobal, at the other
attack, everything went very differently. The ground chosen for the
first parallel was, owing to the exigencies of the contour of the hill,
only 400 yards from the fort. The working parties were discovered
at once, and a heavy fire was directed on them, not only from San
Cristobal, but from the Castle, across the river. It was found that
there was no soil to dig in--what little once existed had been used in
building the old trenches of the first siege, and the French governor,
during his days of respite, May 15-18, had ingeniously ordered that all
this earth should be carted away, and thrown down the steep towards
the river. All that could be done was to place a row of gabions along
the intended line of trench, and to begin to bring up earth from below
to stuff them. At daylight there was not more than two feet of earth
thrown up along the more important points in the parallel, where it
was intended that three batteries should be placed. The enemy’s fire
soon knocked over the gabions, and the working parties had to be
withdrawn from a great part of the front. Practically nothing had been
accomplished, and there had been many casualties.
Things continued to go on in the same fashion during the succeeding
days. The parallel opposite the Castle was easily completed with
little loss; a great battery for twenty guns was thrown up in the
middle of it, and received its pieces, sixteen brass 24-pounders and
four howitzers, on the night of the 2nd-3rd. No attempt was made to
begin a second parallel nearer the Castle, from which it could be
battered at short range. On the other hand the San Cristobal attack
encountered heart-rending difficulties from the want of soil; the
screen of gabions was knocked about, the two batteries opposite the
fort made little progress, and the only thing completed was a third
battery, at the extreme edge of the hill, which was far enough away
to escape destruction, but also too far away (1,200 yards) to do much
damage. It seemed so hopeless to work on the bare rock that Wellington
ordered £400 worth of wool-packs to be bought in Elvas, and when these
were brought up on June 2 they proved impermeable to shot, and a solid
start could be made for the parapets of the batteries. But the enemy
kept dropping shells, from mortars in the Castle, among the working
parties, with great accuracy, and the casualties were many. On June 2nd
two small batteries, for five and eight guns respectively, had at last
been erected about 450 yards from the fort, and a third behind them, in
support, for four more guns, which were to shoot over the parallel.
At half-past nine in the morning of June 3rd the batteries on both
fronts began to play on their chosen objectives. The fire was at first
wild, owing to the eccentric behaviour of the old seventeenth-century
brass guns, every one of which had its tricks and deficiencies. As
the gunners began to learn and humour them, some effect began to be
produced, especially on the Castle. Here great flakes of masonry
began to fall in the evening, but it was noticed that behind the
stone facing there was a core of clay-slate, the natural soil of the
Castle hill, which remained perpendicular when the masonry crumbled.
On San Cristobal, the south-east front of the fort, the one selected
for breaching, was somewhat damaged, and the guns nearly silenced by
evening. But the besiegers’ artillery had already begun to fall off
in strength: only one piece had been disabled by the French, but four
others had gone out of action owing to their own faults, ‘unbushing,’
‘muzzle drooping,’ or carriages shaken to pieces by recoil. The second
day of fire (June 4th) was hardly more satisfactory in its results:
against the Castle the guns made better practice so far as accurate
hitting the mark went, but the balls seemed to have no effect: the core
of soil behind the breached masonry remained nearly as perpendicular as
on the preceding evening. ‘Eight-inch shells fired against it would not
penetrate it,’ wrote the disgusted Alexander Dickson, ‘but absolutely
dropped back, and burst below among the rubbish[526].’ Meanwhile one
more gun in this attack was disabled by the French fire, two by ‘muzzle
drooping,’ and three howitzer carriages were so shaken that they had
to be withdrawn for repairs. Only thirteen guns out of the original
twenty were firing at sunset, and ‘the failure of the old brass pieces
was becoming so alarming that an interval of seven to eight minutes
was ordered between each round, to give the metal time to cool[527].’
A new battery was constructed at the right end of the parallel, near
the river, at a point somewhat nearer to the Castle than the original
battery, in the hope that fire from a distance shorter by a hundred
yards might have better effect, and five guns were moved into it under
cover of the night.
[526] _Dickson Papers_, ed. Leslie, p. 405.
[527] Jones, _Sieges of the Peninsula_, i. p. 54.
On San Cristobal the second day’s fire was a little better in results,
the flank of the fort which was selected for breaching having its
parapet knocked to pieces, and much debris having fallen into the
ditch. But unknown to the besiegers, whose view could not command the
bottom of the ditch, the French removed most of the stones and rubbish
during the night, so that the accumulation at the bottom, on which the
practicability of the future breach depended, was much smaller than
was supposed by the British engineers. Two more guns and two howitzers
in this attack were out of action by the evening--all owing to their
own defects, not to the fire from the fort. The batteries were much
incommoded by an enfilading fire across the river from the Castle,
where some guns had been placed on a high ‘cavalier’ to bear on the
slopes below Cristobal.
On June 5 affairs went on much in the same style: the breaching of the
Castle was an absolute failure: ‘the practice was extremely good, but
the bank of earth at the breach still remained perpendicular[528].’ It
was discovered, however, that the French were so far alarmed at the
results of the battering that they were constructing elaborate inner
retrenchments behind the breach. On Cristobal the prospects looked more
promising; so much of the wall as was visible over the edge of the
ditch along the attacked front was demolished for a distance of many
yards. With another day’s fire it was decided that the breach would be
practicable[529].
[528] Jones, _Sieges of the Peninsula_, i. p. 57.
[529] This decision was the result of the report of an engineer
officer, Lieutenant Forster, who crept up to the edge of the
ditch during the night of the 5th-6th, and saw much rubble
therein.
Accordingly the batteries on both sides of the river thundered away
for the whole day on the 6th, the Castle attack with fourteen guns out
of its original twenty, the Cristobal attack with seventeen remaining
out of twenty-three. On the former front the results were somewhat
more satisfactory than those of the three first days of battering: the
seam in the castle wall appearing much wider, and the accumulation of
rubbish at its foot beginning to look appreciable. Observers in the
trenches held that a single man, climbing unhindered, might get up
to the top, but of course there was a great difference between such
a scrambling place and a ‘practicable breach.’ Nothing, at any rate,
could yet be done on this side in the way of assault. There were, it
must be remembered, 800 yards of open ground between the parallel from
which a storming-column must start and the foot of the damaged wall,
not to speak of the muddy bed of the Rivillas brook, which had to be
forded in order to reach the Castle hill.
The San Cristobal breach, on the other hand, was judged ripe for
assault, though the condition of its lower part was not accurately
known. According to French accounts it was probably practicable at
dusk, but the moment that night fell sixty men went down into the
ditch, and began clearing away the débris with such energy that there
was a sheer seven-foot drop once more, at midnight, between the bottom
of the excavation and the lip of the battered wall above it. The
garrison also stuffed up the breach with _chevaux de frise_, and carts
turned upside down and jammed together, while the sappers in the fort
prepared a quantity of fourteen-inch bombs, to be thrown by hand into
the ditch when an assault should be made. It is probable that the delay
of over four hours between dark (7.30) and midnight, when the storm
came, just sufficed to provide defences strong enough to render the
attack hopeless. The governor of the fort, Captain Chauvin of the 88th
Line, deserves all credit for his admirable activity and resource.
The arrangement of the assault fell to General Houston, whose division
was to deliver it. The regiments from which volunteers were picked
were the 1/51st, 2/85th, and 17th Portuguese. The forlorn hope of
twenty-five men was conducted by the engineer, Lieutenant Forster, who
had explored the ditch on the preceding night, and led by Lieutenant
Dyas of the 51st. The main body of the assaulting column was composed
of 155 grenadiers, led by Major Mackintosh of the 85th; they were
divided into two companies; the leading company carried ten ladders,
for use in case it should be found that the ditch was cleared and the
ascent to the breach steep. Detachments from the guards of the trenches
were to move out, and cut the communication between San Cristobal
and the works near the bridge-head, from which reinforcements might
come[530].
[530] Details of the orders for the assault may he found on pp.
62-3 of Jones’s _Sieges_, vol. i.
[Illustration: FORT SAN CRISTOBAL FROM THE SOUTH BANK OF THE GUADIANA]
At midnight the stormers broke out of the trenches, and ran, as fast as
was possible in the obscurity, up the 400 yards of bare hillside which
separated them from the fort. They suffered no great loss in the
early moments of their rush, for though the garrison detected them at
once, and plied them both with grape and with musketry, the darkness
was a good protection. The forlorn hope crossed the counterscarp with
no difficulty--it was only four feet deep in front of the breach-and
leaped down into the ditch. There they came to a stand at once, for
there were seven feet of sheer ascent from the hole in which they stood
to the lowest point of the lip of the breach, and they saw that the gap
itself had been stopped with the carts, _chevaux de frise_ and other
obstacles. Their officers called them off, and they were retiring with
little loss, when the main body of the storming party came leaping
down into the ditch. Getting news that the breach was impracticable,
the officers in command of the two grenadier companies made a gallant
but ill-judged series of attempts to escalade the unbreached parts
of the scarp with the ten ladders that their men carried. The ascent
being twenty feet high everywhere, and the ladders only fifteen feet
long, it was bound to fail. But, refusing to be discomfited by a first
failure, the stormers carried the ladders round to several other points
of the ditch, looking in vain for a place where the walls might prove
lower. The French garrison plied them incessantly with musketry, and
kept rolling down among them the live shells that had been prepared
for the occasion. At last the losses had grown so great that the
wearied assailants, after spending nearly an hour in the ditch, had
to withdraw. Out of 180 men employed there were no less than 12 dead
and about 80 wounded[531], a sufficient testimony to the obstinacy of
the assault. How hopeless it was may be judged from the fact that the
French had only 1 man killed and 5 wounded. Everything seems to have
been miscalculated in this unhappy affair--especially the number of the
stormers--180 men of all ranks were wholly inadequate for the assault.
[531] 51st Regiment: 3 killed, an officer and 35 men wounded, 3
missing = 42.
85th Regiment: 2 officers and 6 men wounded = 8.
17th Portuguese: 9 killed, 2 officers and 26 men wounded = 37.
_Chasseurs Britanniques_ and Brunswick Oels: 7 wounded.
Engineers: 1 officer mortally wounded. Jones says (i. 65) 12
killed and 90 wounded, but D’Urban gives the number stated above,
and the figures of the returns bear him out.
The failure against San Cristobal convinced Wellington’s engineers
that it was useless to try force till the works had been more severely
battered, and three further days of artillery work were put in, before
a second storm was tried. The old guns from Elvas continued to disable
themselves, and on the 9th only thirteen were in proper order on the
Cristobal attack. Things would have been still worse opposite the
Castle if six good iron ship-guns from Lisbon had not come up on the
7th. These were put into a new battery on the extreme right, and worked
very well. But, including them, there were only twenty pieces playing
on the Castle breach on the 8th and 9th. Of the original forty-six guns
and howitzers only twenty-seven survived!
The net result of these last three days of bombardment on the Castle
side was still unsatisfactory. The ship-guns had at last brought down
a good deal of earth and rubble, which was lying in a heap at the foot
of the battered wall. But on each of the mornings of the 8th and 9th it
was found that the French had, during the dark hours, scarped the front
of the breach, and thrown aside so much of the débris that there was
still a perpendicular face of six or seven feet high, between the top
of the heap of broken earth and masonry and the bottom of the seam of
broken wall. This work had been carried out by the garrison under great
difficulties, for the British batteries had been throwing grape against
the foot of the breach all night, for the purpose of preventing any
such activity. But the French, trusting to the cover of the darkness,
had continued to work on manfully, and, though some men were hit, the
task had on each night been more or less carried out. On the 9th the
engineers came to the conclusion that they dared not advise any attempt
to storm on this side, considering the enormous distance--600 yards
from the wall--at which the columns of attack would have to start, even
if they debouched from the part of the parallel which was nearest to
the Castle. There was also the bed of the Rivillas to cross, and the
guns from that part of the Castle which was uninjured, and from the
flank of San Cristobal, would cut up the stormers by enfilading fire.
The engineers reluctantly concluded that nothing could be done against
the Castle till San Cristobal had fallen, or till a second parallel had
been pushed forward much nearer to the place. This was a confession
that all their original plans had been erroneous, and that the immense
store of shot and shell lavished on the Castle breach had been wasted.
All therefore depended on the result of a second attempt to storm San
Cristobal. Here there were now two breaches, a large and a small one;
the parapets were completely knocked to pieces, and the fort looked
a mere battered heap; its fire had been nearly silenced--so much so
that not a single casualty occurred in the trench before it during
the last twelve hours of bombardment. Nevertheless the breaches were
not very practicable, for here (as at the Castle) the garrison had,
by hard work during the nights, cleared away great part of the débris
below the breach; they could not be prevented from doing so, because
the besiegers’ batteries were so far away that they were unable to
command the dead ground in the bottom of the ditch. On each morning
the battered parapet was found to have been replaced with sandbags and
wool-packs, and the breach itself stopped with _chevaux de frise_.
These were swept away again by continual battering, both on the 8th and
the 9th, but the gallant garrison began to replace them on each evening
the moment that dusk fell. Nor could this be prevented, because,
contrary to all the rules of siegecraft, the besiegers had not sapped
up close enough to the walls to enable them to prevent repairs from
being carried out. General Phillipon had doubled the garrison of the
fort, which now consisted of two companies instead of the one that had
held it on the 6th. The men were furnished with three muskets each, and
a great store of grenades, fire-balls, and live shell, prepared for
throwing by hand, had been sent up into the work.
The 7th Division delivered its second assault on the night of the 9th,
three hours earlier than on the previous occasion, and only ninety
minutes after dark had fallen. This moment had been chosen in order
that the French might have less time to do repairs. But nine o’clock
was still too late an hour; rough preparations to receive the stormers
had already been made when they arrived. The French narratives state
that an assault by daylight in the late afternoon would have been much
more likely to succeed[532]. But this idea, though it had been mooted
in the English camp, was rejected because of the distance which the
attacking column would have to advance, fully visible in the open,
under fire, and uphill. Once more the fact that the parallel was too
far from the fort had become all important as a hindrance; on the San
Cristobal heights approaches could not be driven any nearer, for want
of earth to dig in. This had been known from the first, and should have
been held sufficient reason for not attacking at all upon this stony
height.
[532] Lamare, p. 193.
General Houston told off for the assault a force twice as great as
that which had been sent forward on the 6th, 400 men instead of 180,
and (a precaution neglected on the previous occasion) 100 picked
shots were told off to line the outer edge of the ditch and keep up a
fire against the enemy lining the breach. The assaulting column was
guided by Lieutenant Hunt, R.E., and commanded by Major McGeechy of
the 17th Portuguese[533]. The volunteers forming it were taken from
all the regiments of Sontag’s brigade, the 51st, 85th, _Chasseurs
Britanniques_, and Brunswick Oels, and also from the 17th Portuguese.
There being now two breaches, the column was to divide into two halves,
one making for that in the salient angle, the other for that in the
curtain. The former carried six ladders, the latter ten[534].
[533] The forlorn hope was _again_ led by Dyas of the 51st.
[534] For details see Houston’s orders on pp. 77-9 of Jones’s
vol. i.
The men were paraded in the ravine behind the parallel, and came out
into the open at 9 o’clock. They were seen at once, and came under
a rapid fire of musketry as they breasted the slope. The guiding
engineer, Hunt, and the commander of the column, McGeechy, were both
killed before the ditch was reached, with many others. But the forlorn
hope sprang down and made for the breaches, followed a moment later by
the supports. It appears that, as on June 6th, there was found to be
a gap between the top of the rubble in the ditch and the lips of both
breaches, six or seven feet high. The ladders were therefore brought
forward, and many of them were reared; but the musketry fire knocked
over nearly every man who tried to ascend them, and the few who got
a footing in the breach were met and bayoneted by the garrison, who
showed splendid courage, running down the slope of the breach and
charging any small knot of men who struggled on from the ladders[535].
Meanwhile the mass in the ditch, who could not press forward to the
breach-foot, were pelted with stones, hand-grenades, bags of powder,
and fire-balls. Finally, after nearly an hour of unavailing effort,
all the ladders were broken or thrown down, the assailants had lost 5
officers and 49 men killed, and 8 officers and 77 men wounded, and the
column recoiled to the trenches[536]. The breaches and glacis were so
strewn with their wounded that the artillery dared not fire to cover
the retreat, and the French, descending into the ditch, took up to
the fort two wounded officers as prisoners, removed the ladders, and
threw aside much of the débris, so that the breach-foot was completely
cleared.
[535] French observers in the fort noted one attempt made by men
of their own nationality, from the _Chasseurs Britanniques_.
A young officer, calling ‘Je monte, suivez-moi,’ got to the
top of the ladder with two or three of his soldiers, ran some
feet forward up the lip of the breach, and was then bayoneted.
This must have been Lieutenant Dufief of the _C.B._, the only
officer of the corps returned as hurt in the storm. See Lapéne’s
_Campagne de 1810-11 dans le Midi de l’Espagne_, p. 210.
[536] The losses were, according to the report:--
Killed. Wounded. Missing.
Officers. Men. Officers. Men. Officers. Men. Total.
51st 1 23 2 31 -- -- = 57
85th 1 7 1 10 1 -- = 20
_Chasseurs Britanniques_ -- 8 1 13 -- 2 = 24
Brunswick Oels -- 1 1 5 -- -- = 7
17th Portuguese 2 10 1 16 1 -- = 30
Engineers 1 -- -- -- -- -- = 1
---
Total, 54 killed, 81 wounded, and 4 missing = 139
The losses suffered, one man in three, and the time for which the
stormers persisted in the attempt, some fifty minutes, prove that there
was no want of courage shown on this disastrous night. The fact seems
to be that, as on the 6th, the breach was not really practicable, that
an attack could hardly succeed when the column had to cross 400 yards
of exposed ground before reaching the fort, and that a storm should
never have been tried, when the besieger had not sapped up to the edge
of the ditch and placed himself in a position to command it. It may be
mentioned that such a ditch as this, hewn in the live rock and very
deep, was particularly hard to deal with. Its edges could not become
abraded, and it was easy for the defenders to shovel away the débris
that fell into it, because the bottom was solid and hard, and the
masonry that had been knocked down lay on it, instead of sinking into
its floor.
On the morning of the 10th the fire against the Castle was continued
with vigour, but on San Cristobal there was a six hours’ truce, which
was asked and granted, in order that the many wounded scattered along
the slope below the fort might be gathered in. The French, being able
to work unmolested at repairs during the cessation of fire, had every
reason for giving a polite and humane answer to the request made by the
besiegers.