important movements that were on foot in the early spring of 1810
were those of Junot and Ney in the plains of Leon. In pursuance
of the Emperor’s orders to the effect that the whole plain-land
of Leon was to be occupied, as a preliminary to the invasion of
Portugal, Loison, who had re-entered Spain at the head of a number
of battalions which were ultimately to join the corps of Ney, was
ordered to move on from Valladolid and occupy the country about
Benavente and Astorga. He was left free to select either of those
towns as his head quarters, and was directed to communicate with
Bonnet, when the latter should have entered the Asturias, so that
their operations should threaten Galicia simultaneously[241].
Loison’s expedition, however, proved a complete failure; he marched
towards Astorga early in February with nearly 10,000 men. On the
11th he appeared before that town, and learnt that since Carrié’s
reconnaissance in October 1809[242], it had been much strengthened.
La Romana had repaired the breaches of its mediaeval walls. He had
thrown up entrenchments round the suburb of La Reteibia, which
occupies that part of the hill of Astorga, which is not covered
by the town itself. He had also established outlying posts in the
suburbs of San Andrés and Puerta del Rey, which lie at the foot of
the hill, on its northern and eastern sides. Fourteen guns, only two
of them 12-pounders, the rest light, had been mounted on the walls.
The place, therefore, was a make-shift fortification of the most
antiquated style. General Garcia Velasco, who had been left behind in
Galicia with one division of the old Northern army when Del Parque
marched for Estremadura, was in charge of this portion of the Spanish
front, under the superintendence of Mahy, the Captain-General. He had
placed half his troops--five battalions, or 2,700 men, in Astorga,
while he himself with the remainder lay beyond the mountains, at
Villafranca, in the Vierzo, with about the same force. The total of
organized troops in Galicia at this moment did not exceed 8,000 men,
including the small brigade which Mahy sent to the Asturias, and a
detachment under Echevarria at Puebla de Senabria. Astorga had not
been expecting a siege at such an early date as February 11; it was
only provisioned for twenty days, and the guns had not ammunition
to last for even that short space of time. The governor, José
Santocildes, was a man of courage and resource, who knew how to put
on a bold face to an impossible situation, or instant disaster might
have followed.
[241] Napoleon to Berthier, Jan. 11, 1810.
[242] See p. 76.
Loison was disconcerted to find that Astorga, his destined head
quarters, was held and garrisoned against him. His engineers
reconnoitred its walls, and informed him that it could not be taken
without a regular battering-train. He had only field-pieces with him,
the weather was abominable, and his troops--all conscript battalions
from France--were suffering terribly from the continued rain and
cold. Wherefore he contented himself with inviting Santocildes to
surrender, promising him promotion at King Joseph’s hands, if he
‘would implore the clemency of a sovereign who treats all Spaniards
like a father[243].’ When the governor sent a curt reply, intimating
that he and his people intended to do their duty, Loison retired to
La Baneza, and reported to his chiefs that he was helpless for want
of siege-guns. He announced at the same time that he had attempted
to communicate with Bonnet at Oviedo, by sending two battalions to
the foot of the pass of Pajares, but that the mountain roads were all
blocked with snow, and that this detachment had been forced to fall
back into the plains, without obtaining any news of what was afoot in
the Asturias[244].
A few days later, the head of Junot’s corps entered the province
of Leon, and Loison was directed to move southward and join Ney
at Salamanca. His place on the Esla and the Orbigo was taken by
Clausel’s division of the 8th Corps. The newly arrived general
executed another reconnaissance to the neighbourhood of Astorga, and
on February 26 sent Santocildes a second summons, in the name of
Junot. It received the same answer that had been given to Loison.
It was clear that Astorga must be besieged, and that a battering
train must be placed at the disposition of the force charged with
the operation. But in the present state of the roads it would take
some time to bring heavy guns to the front. Further operations had
to be postponed. The 6th Corps, it may be remarked, had executed
at the same time that Loison appeared in front of Astorga, a
demonstration against Ciudad Rodrigo. King Joseph had written from
Andalusia to beg Ney to threaten the place, while the news of the
French victories in the south were still fresh, assuring him that
the Spaniards were so cowed that a prompt surrender was probable.
The Marshal, though doubting the wisdom of these optimistic views,
concentrated his corps, advanced to San Felices, and on February
13 summoned Rodrigo. He got from General Herrasti, the governor,
an answer as bold and confident as that which Loison received from
Santocildes, and returned to Salamanca to disperse his troops in
cantonments and ask for a battering-train[245]. His short and
ineffective excursion to the banks of the Agueda had taken him in
sight of the British outposts on the Spanish frontier, and had
induced Wellington for a moment to think that the invasion of
Portugal was at hand. It was impossible that he should have guessed
that Ney’s advance had no better cause than King Joseph’s foolish
confidence. Hence the withdrawal of the 6th Corps, after the vain
summons of Ciudad Rodrigo, was as inexplicable as its advance. ‘I do
not understand Ney’s movement,’ he wrote to his trusted subordinate,
Robert Craufurd, ‘coupled as it is with the movement upon Badajoz
from the south of Spain. The French are not strong enough for the two
sieges at the same time, and I much doubt whether they are in a state
to undertake one of them[246].’ The prompt retirement of Ney from
before Ciudad Rodrigo, and of Mortier from before Badajoz, completely
justified his conclusions within a day or two of the writing of his
letter.
[243] For the letters of Loison to Santocildes and the reply of
the Spanish brigadier, see the correspondence in Belmas, iii. pp.
53-6.
[244] Loison to Berthier, Feb. 16, from La Baneza.
[245] For notes as to the cause and execution of this abortive
movement, see the diary of Ney’s aide de camp, Sprünglin, pages
402-3.
[246] Wellington to Craufurd, Feb. 16. Compare similar remarks in
Wellington to Beresford, from Vizeu, Feb. 21, 1810.
There was nothing for the French in the kingdom of Leon to do, save
to await the arrival of the great battering-train which Napoleon
had bestowed upon his Army of Portugal. It was far to the rear: on
February 20 its head was only beginning to approach Burgos, and
its tail had not quitted Bayonne. The reason of this tardiness was
the want of draught animals at the southern dépôts of France. The
equipment of the train and the artillery of the 8th Corps, and the
other great reinforcements which had just passed the Pyrenees,
had exhausted the available supplies of horses[247], and when the
authorities at Bayonne had to place the ‘grand park’ on a war footing
there was intolerable delay. Even when detachments of the park had
started, they made slow progress in Spain, for the French horses died
off rapidly in the bitter weather of the plateau of Old Castile, and
it was almost impossible to replace them by requisition from the
country-side. Junot, bold to the verge of rashness, and feverishly
anxious to remake the reputation that he had lost at Vimiero, could
not endure the delay. He sent to requisition Spanish guns from the
governors of Burgos and Segovia, dispatched his own teams to draw
them, and when he heard that a small train was procurable, ordered
the 8th Corps towards Astorga on March 15, leaving the cannon to
follow. The month’s delay in the investment had enabled Santocildes
to fill up the supply of food and ammunition which had been so low
in February; he had now got his fortress in as good state as was
possible, considering the intrinsic weakness of its mediaeval walls,
and had induced 3,000 of the 4,000 inhabitants to retire to Galicia.
[247] Even the 8th Corps had to leave guns behind at Bayonne for
want of horses, Belmas, ii. 13.
On March 21 Clausel’s division invested Astorga, while Solignac’s
came up to Leon and Benavente in support, and St. Croix’s division of
dragoons took post in advance of La Baneza, to observe the Spanish
forces in southern Galicia and the Portuguese of the Tras-os-Montes.
Till the guns should arrive, there was nothing to be done save to
choose the point of attack, prepare fascines and gabions, and open
the first parallel, out of harm’s way from the small artillery of the
garrison--none of it heavier than a 12-pounder. Valazé, Junot’s chief
engineer, opined that the low-lying suburbs at the foot of the hill
of Astorga might be neglected, and the newly entrenched Reteibia
on the high ground masked by a false attack, while the projecting
and unflanked north-west corner of the old walls of the city itself
might be battered from the slopes below: here, as in all its circuit,
the place had neither ditch nor glacis: there was simply the stout
mediaeval wall, broken every 30 yards by a small square tower, which
followed the sky-line of the plateau.
The first three weeks of the siege had an unusual character, since
the French could build what works they pleased, but could not
seriously batter Astorga with the sixteen field-guns of small calibre
belonging to the division lying before the walls. The officer in
temporary command of the artillery, Colonel Noël, contented himself
with opening fire from various false attacks, from which the guns
were repeatedly moved, in order to distract the attention of the
enemy from the chosen front on the north-west, where the approaches
were completed, and a great battery constructed, ready for the
siege-guns when they should arrive. Meanwhile there was a good deal
of infantry skirmishing in and about the lower suburbs, in whose
outskirts the French ultimately established themselves, though they
had no intention of pushing up to the walls either from Puerta del
Rey or from San Andrés[248]. The garrison defended itself well,
executed several vigorous sorties, and lost no post of importance,
though the line of resistance in the suburbs was gradually thrust
back. Santocildes received several encouraging messages from his
chief Mahy, who announced that he was bringing up to the pass of
Foncebadon, on the edge of the plain of Astorga, every man that
Galicia could furnish. But even when the Captain-General had brought
his reserves from Lugo to join Garcia’s division, they had only
5,000 bayonets. To hold them off, Junot sent Clausel’s division to
the outposts, and replaced it in the trenches by Solignac’s and
one brigade of Lagrange’s. Mahy, in face of such an accumulation
of men, was absolutely helpless. Echevarria, with his weak brigade
from Puebla de Senabria, had pushed a little forward, to give moral
support to Mahy. He was surprised and routed near Alcanizas on April
10, by St. Croix’s dragoons.
[248] There are good narratives in the autobiographies of Noël
and Hulot of the artillery, beside the excellent account in
Belmas, vol. iii.
[Illustration: SIEGE OF ASTORGA]
On the 15th the siege-train arrived from Valladolid; it was
small[249], but sufficient against an enemy so miserably provided
with guns as Santocildes. Junot himself came up on the 17th to watch
the effect of the attack. It was instant and overpowering. When
once the artillery had been placed in the works prepared for it,
and had begun its fire, the old walls of Astorga began to crumble.
The light Spanish pieces on the enceinte were overpowered, despite
of the gallant way in which the gunners stuck to their work[250].
By noon on the 21st of April the north-western angle of the walls
of Astorga had been beaten down, and the fallen stones, there being
no ditch, had accumulated at the foot of the broad breach, so as
to give an easy entrance. Fortunately for the defence, there was
a large church just inside the angle: its roof and tower had been
shot down, but the garrison had made themselves strong in the lower
parts of the building, and threw up traverses from it to the wall on
each side of the breach. This gave them a second line of defence,
though but a weak one, and when Junot sent in a summons in the
afternoon Santocildes refused his offer. At seven the French general
bade 700 men storm the breach; the forlorn hope was composed of
the voltigeur and grenadier companies of the Irish Legion and the
47th of the Line. The column penetrated to the foot of the breach
without much difficulty, though exposed to heavy musketry from the
walls, and a flanking fire from the suburb of the Reteibia. The
breach was carried, and, in addition, a house built with its back
to the ramparts just inside the enceinte. But the assailants could
get no further, owing to the murderous fire which the Spaniards kept
up from behind the ruined church and the traverses. After an hour
of desperate attempts to break in, they took shelter, some in the
house that they had captured, but the majority behind the lip of the
breach, where they covered themselves as best they could, by piles of
débris built in with their haversacks, and even with the corpses of
the fallen. Under this poor shelter they lay till dark, suffering
heavily. During the night the troops in the trenches ran out a line
of gabions from the front works to the foot of the walls, and by dawn
had opened a good communication with the men at the breach, though
they had to work under a furious but blind fire from above.
[249] Only consisting of four 24-pounders, one 16-pounder, four
12-pounders, eight 6-inch howitzers, and one 6-inch mortar. See
Belmas, iii. 28.
[250] ‘Les Espagnols rispostèrent avec vivacité; on s’étonnait
d’autant plus que, le parapet étant en pierres sèches, chaque
boulet qui le frappait en faisait jaillir de nombreux éclats.’
Belmas, iii. 34.
At dawn on April 22, Santocildes surrendered. He might have held out
some hours longer behind his inner defences, if he had not exhausted
nearly all his musket ammunition in resisting the storm. There
were less than thirty cartridges a head left for the infantry of
the garrison, and only 500 pounds of powder for the artillery. The
defence had been admirable, and, it may be added, very scientific,
a fact proved by the low figures of the dead and wounded, which did
not amount to 200 men[251]. The French, in the assault alone, lost
five officers and 107 men killed, and eight officers and 286 men
wounded[252]. Junot was thought to have been precipitate in ordering
the storm: his excuse was that there were less than two hours of
daylight left, and that, if he had deferred the attack till next
morning, the Spaniards would have retrenched the breach under cover
of the dark, and made it impracticable. The siege cost the 8th Corps
in all 160 killed and some 400 wounded, a heavy butcher’s bill for
the capture of a mediaeval fortress armed with only fourteen light
guns. Two thousand five hundred prisoners were taken, as shown by
Santocildes’ lists, but Junot claimed to have ‘captured 3,500 fine
troops, all with good English muskets, and well clothed in English
great coats,’ as well as 500 sick and wounded--impossible figures.
[251] Two officers and forty-nine men killed, ten officers and
ninety-nine men wounded, according to his official report to the
Junta, in which all details are duly given.
[252] See the figures in Junot’s dispatch, given on pages 66-7 of
Belmas, vol. iii.
On the morning of the surrender Mahy made a feeble demonstration
against the covering troops, on both the passes of Manzanal and
Foncebadon, while Echevarria beat up the force at Penilla which lay
facing him. All three attacks were checked with ease, the Galician
army not being able to put more than 6,000 men in the field on the
three fronts taken together. Its loss was heavy, especially at
Penilla.
After detaching the 22nd Regiment, which was ordered to endeavour
to communicate with Bonnet in the Asturias, and garrisoning Astorga
with two battalions, Junot drew back the greater part of his corps
to Valladolid and Toro. He had been ordered to place himself near
Ney, in order to aid and cover the 6th Corps in the oncoming siege of
Ciudad Rodrigo. At the same time he received the unwelcome news that
Masséna had been named Commander-in-Chief of the Army of Portugal,
and that the 8th Corps was placed under his orders.
Masséna, as has been already mentioned, did not arrive at Salamanca
till May 28th: he could not well have reached the front earlier,
since the Emperor had only placed him in command in April. The long
delay in the opening of the main campaign must, therefore, be laid
to Napoleon’s account rather than to that of his generals. If he had
suspected that every day of waiting meant that Wellington had added
an extra redoubt to the ever-growing lines of Torres Vedras, it is
permissible to believe that he would have hurried forward matters at
a less leisurely pace. But his determination to conduct the invasion
of Portugal in what he called ‘a methodical fashion’ is sufficiently
shown by the orders sent to Salamanca on May 29. ‘Tell the Prince
of Essling that, according to our English intelligence, the army of
General Wellington is composed of no more than 24,000 British and
Germans, and that his Portuguese are only 25,000 strong. I do not
wish to enter Lisbon at this moment, because I could not feed the
city, whose immense population is accustomed to live on sea-borne
food. He can spend the summer months in taking Ciudad Rodrigo, and
then Almeida. He need not hurry, but can go methodically to work. The
English general, having less than 3,000 cavalry, may offer battle on
ground where cavalry cannot act, but will never come out to fight in
the plains[253].’
[253] Napoleon to Berthier, May 29, 1810.
The Emperor then proceeds to add that with the 50,000 men of the 6th
and 8th Corps, the cavalry reserve, &c., Masséna is strong enough to
take both Rodrigo and Almeida at his ease: Reynier and the 2nd Corps
can be called up to the bridge of Alcantara, from whence they can
menace Central Portugal and cover Madrid. No order is given to bring
up this corps to join the main army: it seems that the Emperor at
this moment had in his head the plan, with which Wellington always
credited him, of threatening a secondary attack in the Tagus valley.
The 2nd Corps is treated as covering Masséna’s left, while on his
right he will be flanked by Kellermann, who is to add to the small
force already under his command in Old Castile a whole new division,
that of Serras, composed of troops just arrived from France[254].
This, added to Kellermann’s dragoons, would make a corps of 12,000
men. In addition, as the Emperor remarks, by the time that the
Army of Portugal is ready to march on Lisbon, it will have in its
rear the 9th Corps under Drouet, nearly 20,000 men, who will be
concentrated at Valladolid before the autumn has begun. There will
be over 30,000 men in Leon and Old Castile when Masséna’s army moves
on from Almeida, and in the rear of these again Burgos, Navarre,
and Biscay will be held by the Young Guard, and by twenty-six 4th
battalions from France, which were due to start after the 9th Corps,
and would have made their appearance south of the Pyrenees by August
or September.
[254] Serras’ division consisted of the 113th Line, a Tuscan
regiment originally employed in Catalonia, which had been so cut
up in 1809 that it had been sent back to refill its cadres; also
of the 4th of the Vistula (two battalions), a Polish regiment
raised in 1810, with four provisional battalions, and three stray
battalions belonging to regiments in the South, which had not
been allowed to go on to join Soult [4th battalions of the 32nd
and 58th Line and of 12th Léger]: his total strength was 8,000
men.
This document is a very curious product of the imperial pen.
It would be hard to find in the rest of the _Correspondance_ a
dispatch which so completely abandons the ‘Napoleonic methods’ of
quick concentration and sharp strokes, and orders a delay of three
months or more in the completion of a campaign whose preliminary
operations had begun so far back as February. We may reject at
once the explanation offered by some of Napoleon’s enemies, to the
effect that he was jealous of Masséna, and did not wish him to
achieve too rapid or too brilliant a success. But it is clear that a
humanitarian regard for the possible sufferings of the inhabitants
of Lisbon--the only reason alleged for the delay--is an inadequate
motive. Such things did not normally affect the Emperor, and he must
have remembered that when Junot occupied Portugal at the mid-winter
of 1807-8 famine had not played its part in the difficulties
encountered by the French. Nor does it seem that an exaggerated
estimate of the enemy’s strength induced him to postpone the
attack till all the reinforcements had arrived. He under-estimates
Wellington’s British troops by some 5,000, his Portuguese troops by
at least 15,000 men. He is utterly ignorant of the works of Torres
Vedras, though six months’ labour has already been lavished on them,
and by this time they were already defensible. Three months seem
an altogether exaggerated time to devote to the sieges of the two
little old-fashioned second-rate fortresses of Ciudad Rodrigo and
Almeida. From whence, then, comes this unprecedented resolve to adopt
a ‘methodical’ system in dealing with the invasion of Portugal? It
has been suggested that the Emperor was very desirous to make sure
of the absolute suppression of the guerrilleros of the Pyrenees and
the Ebro, before pushing forward his field army to Lisbon. Possibly
he was influenced by his knowledge of the infinite difficulty that
Masséna would find in equipping himself with a train, and more
especially in creating magazines during the months before the harvest
had been gathered in. Some have thought that, looking far forward,
he considered it would be more disastrous to the English army to be
‘driven into the sea’ somewhere in the rough months of October and
November rather than in the fine weather of June--and undoubtedly
no one who reads his dispatches can doubt that the desire to deal
an absolutely crushing blow to that army was his dominating idea
throughout. But probably the main determining factor in Napoleon’s
mind was the resolve that there should be no failure this time, for
want of preparation or want of sufficient strength; that no risks
should be taken, and that what he regarded as an overwhelming force
should be launched upon Portugal. After Junot’s disaster of 1808
and Soult’s fiasco in 1809, the Imperial prestige could not stand
a third failure. The old pledge that ‘the leopard should be driven
into the sea’ must be redeemed at all costs on this occasion. Solid
success rather than a brilliant campaign must be the end kept in
view: hence came the elaborate preparations for the sustaining of
Masséna’s advance by the support of Drouet, Kellermann, and Serras.
Even Suchet’s operations in Eastern Spain were to be conducted
with some regard to the affairs of Portugal[255]. It was a broad
and a formidable plan--but it failed in one all-important factor.
Wellington’s strength was underrated; it was no mere driving of
25,000 British troops into the sea that was now in question, but
the reduction of a kingdom where every man had been placed under
arms, and every preparation made for passive as well as for active
resistance. When Napoleon was once more foiled, it was because he
had treated the Portuguese army--a ‘_tas de coquins_’ as he called
them--as a negligible quantity, and because he had foreseen neither
that systematic devastation of the land, nor the creation of those
vast lines in front of Lisbon, which were such essential features of
Wellington’s scheme of defence. The French attack was delivered by
65,000 men, not by the 100,000 whose advent the British general had
feared: and precisely because the numbers of the Army of Portugal
were no greater, the attack was made on the Beira frontier only.
Masséna had no men to spare for the secondary invasion south of the
Tagus which Wellington had expected and dreaded. The Emperor’s plans
went to wreck because he had under-estimated his enemy, and assigned
too small a force to his lieutenant. But it was no ordinary general
who had so prepared his defence that Napoleon’s calculations went all
astray. The genius of Wellington was the true cause of the disastrous
end of the long-prepared invasion.
[255] See the curious dispatch no. 16651, of July 14, directing
Suchet to be ready to send half his corps to Valladolid after he
should have taken Tortosa.
SECTION XIX: CHAPTER V
THE MONTHS OF WAITING: THE SIEGE OF CIUDAD RODRIGO (MAY-JULY 1810)
The long months of delay that followed the first operations of the
French in 1810 were a time of anxious waiting for Wellington. He had
moved his head quarters to Vizeu on the 12th of January, and had
been lying in that bleak and lofty town all through the rest of the
winter. With him there had come to the North all the old British
divisions save the 2nd, which had been left with Hill, first at
Abrantes and then at Portalegre, to watch the French between the
Tagus and the Guadiana. The 1st Division was placed at Vizeu, the 3rd
at Trancoso and the neighbouring villages, the 4th at Guarda, while
the cavalry wintered in the coast plain between Coimbra and Aveiro.
Only the Light Brigade of Robert Craufurd, which takes the new
style of the Light _Division_ on March 1, was pushed forward to the
Spanish frontier, and lay in the villages about Almeida[256], with
its outposts pushed forward to the line of the Agueda. The Portuguese
regular brigades, which were afterwards incorporated in the British
divisions, were still lying in winter quarters around Coimbra and
Thomar, drilling hard and incorporating their recruits. The militia
were also under arms at their regimental head quarters, save the
few battalions which had already been thrown into Elvas, Almeida,
Peniche, and Abrantes.
[256] The head quarters of the 43rd during January and February
were at Valverde, above the Coa, those of the 52nd at Pinhel,
those of the 95th at Villa Torpim.
Wellington’s front, facing the French, was formed by Hill’s corps
in the Alemtejo, Lecor’s Portuguese brigade in the Castello Branco
district, and Craufurd’s force on the Agueda. Neither Hill nor
Lecor was in actual contact with the enemy, and La Romana’s army,
spread out from the Pass of Perales to Zafra and Araçena in a thin
line, lay between them and Reynier’s and Mortier’s outposts. It was
otherwise with Craufurd, who was placed north of La Romana’s left
division, that of Martin Carrera; he was in close touch with Ney’s
corps all along the line of the Agueda, as far as the Douro. Since
the outposts of the 6th Corps had been pushed forward on March 9th,
the Commander of the Light Division was in a most responsible, not
to say a dangerous, position. The main army was forty miles to his
rear in its cantonments at Vizeu, Guarda, and Trancoso. He had with
him of British infantry only the first battalions of the 43rd,
52nd, and 95th, with one battery, and one regiment of cavalry, the
1st Hussars of the King’s German Legion. His orders were to keep
open the communication with Ciudad Rodrigo till the last possible
moment, to cover Almeida as long as was prudent, and to keep the
Commander-in-Chief advised of every movement of the enemy. It was
clear that he might be thrust back at any moment: the 6th Corps,
since Loison had joined it, was 30,000 strong: the Light Division had
only 2,500 infantry with the 500 German light horse. On March 28th
Wellington sent up to reinforce Craufurd two battalions of Caçadores,
the 1st and 2nd. The latter of these units was afterwards changed for
the 3rd[257], which, trained by Elder, the best of all the colonels
lent to the Portuguese army, was reckoned the most efficient corps
that could be selected from Beresford’s command. But the two Caçador
battalions only added 1,000 bayonets to the Light Division, and even
after their arrival Craufurd’s force was less than 4,000 strong.
[257] On Craufurd’s complaint that the 2nd Caçadores were badly
commanded and too full of boys. He repeatedly asked for, and
ultimately obtained, the 3rd battalion in place of the 2nd,
because of his confidence in Elder.
Robert Craufurd, though only a brigadier, and junior of his rank,
had been chosen by Wellington to take charge of his outpost line
because he was one of the very few officers then in the Peninsula in
whose ability his Commander-in-Chief had perfect confidence. Nothing
is more striking than to compare the tone and character of the
letters which Wellington wrote to him with those which he dispatched
to most of his other general officers. Only with Craufurd, Hill,
and Beresford, did he ever condescend to enter into explanations
and state reasons. The rest receive orders without comment, which
they are directed to carry out, and are given no opportunity to
discuss[258]. The difference was noted and resented by the others:
when on March 8th Craufurd was formally given charge of the whole
outpost line of the army, and his seniors Picton and Cole were
told to conform their movements to his, without waiting for orders
from head quarters, some friction was engendered[259]. Picton and
Craufurd, in especial, were for the rest of the campaign in a state
of latent hostility, which more than once led to high words when they
met--a fact which was not without its dangers to the welfare of the
army[260].
[258] Note especially Wellington’s explanatory dispatch to
Craufurd of March 8, where he even goes so far as to give his
subordinate a free hand as to the choice of his line: ‘You must
be a better judge of the details of this question than I can be,
and I wish you to consider them, in order to be able to carry
the plan into execution when I shall send it to you.’ In another
letter Wellington writes: ‘Nothing can be of greater advantage to
me than to have the benefit of your opinion on _any_ subject.’
[259] ‘I intend that the divisions of Generals Cole and Picton
should support you on the Coa, without waiting for orders from
me, if it should be necessary, and they shall be directed
accordingly.’ 8th March, from Vizeu.
[260] It should not be forgotten that Picton, no less than
Craufurd, was at this time living down an old disaster. But
Picton’s misfortune had not been military. It was the celebrated
case of _Rex_ v. _Picton_. He had been tried for permitting
the use of torture to extract evidence against criminals
while governor of the newly conquered island of Trinidad, and
convicted, though Spanish law (which was still in force in
Trinidad) apparently permitted of the practice. After this Picton
was a marked man. The story of Luisa Calderon, the quadroon
girl who had been tortured by ‘picketing,’ had been appearing
intermittently in the columns of every Whig paper for more than
three years.
The celebrated commander of the Light Division was at this time well
known for his ability, but reckoned rather an unlucky soldier. He had
entered the army so far back as 1779, and had seen service in every
quarter of the globe, yet in 1809 was only a colonel. This was the
more astounding since he was one of the few scientific soldiers in
the British army when the Revolutionary War broke out. He had spent
some time at Berlin in 1782, studying the tactics of the army of
Frederick the Great, and had translated into English the official
Prussian treatise on the Art of War. His knowledge of German, a rare
accomplishment in the British army at the end of the eighteenth
century, caused him to be given the post of military attaché at
Coburg’s head quarters in 1794, and he followed the Austrian army
through all the disasters of that and the two following years. Again
in 1799 he went out to take the same post at the head quarters of
the army of Switzerland, but quitted it to serve on the staff of the
Duke of York, during the miserable Dutch expedition of that same
year. He seemed destined to witness nothing but disasters, and though
he was known to have done his duty with admirable zeal and energy
in every post that he occupied, promotion lingered. Probably his
caustic tongue and fiery temper were his hindrances, but it seems
astonishing that he took twenty-six years to attain the rank of
colonel, though he was not destitute of political influence, having
friends and relatives in Parliament, and even in the Ministry[261].
In 1801 he was a disappointed man, thought of retiring from the
army, and, having accepted a nomination borough, sat in the Commons
for five years. In 1805 he was at last made a colonel, and in the
following year went on active service with the expedition which,
sent originally to the Cape, was distracted in 1807 to the unhappy
Buenos Ayres campaign. This was the zenith of his misfortunes; it
was he who, placed in charge of a light brigade by the incapable
Whitelocke, was thrust forward into the midst of the tangled streets
of Buenos Ayres, surrounded in the convent of San Domingo, and forced
to capitulate for lack of support. At the ensuing court-martial he
was acquitted of all blame, but the fact that he had surrendered a
British brigade rankled in his mind for the rest of his life. The
unshaken confidence in his abilities felt by the Home authorities was
marked by the fact that he was sent out in October 1808 with Baird’s
corps, which landed at Corunna, and again in June 1809 to Lisbon,
each time in command of a brigade. But his bad luck seemed still
to attend him: he missed the victory of Corunna because Moore had
detached his brigade on the inexplicable march to Vigo. He failed to
be present at Talavera, despite of the famous forced march which he
made towards the sound of the cannon.
[261] His elder brother, Sir Charles Craufurd, was
Deputy-Adjutant-General, and M.P. for Retford. Windham, the
Secretary for War, was his devoted friend.
In 1810 Craufurd was burning to vindicate his reputation, and to
show that the confidence which Wellington placed in him was not
undeserved. He still regarded himself as a man who had been unjustly
dealt with, and had never been given his chance. He could not forget
that he was four years older than Beresford, five years older than
Wellington, eight years older than Hill, yet was but a junior
brigadier-general in charge of a division[262]. He was full of a
consuming energy, on the look-out for slights and quarrels, a very
strict disciplinarian, restless himself and leaving his troops no
rest. He was not liked by all his officers: in the Light Division
he had many admirers[263] and many bitter critics. Nor was he at
first popular with the rank and file, though they soon began to
recognize the keen intelligence that guided his actions, and to see
that he was a just if a hard master[264]. In the matter of feeding
his troops, the most difficult task imposed on a general of the
Peninsular army, he had an unparalleled reputation for accomplishing
the impossible--even if the most drastic methods had to be employed.
The famous old story about Wellington and the commissary had Craufurd
(and not, as it is sometimes told, Picton) as its hero. As a sample
of his high-handed ways, it may be mentioned that he once seized
and impounded some church-plate till the villages to which it
belonged found him some corn for his starving division. Craufurd, on
one of his happy days, and they were many, was the most brilliant
subordinate that Wellington ever owned. His mistakes--and he
committed more than one--were the faults of an ardent and ambitious
spirit taking an immoderate risk in the hour of excitement.
[262] Though senior in the date of his first commission to nearly
all the officers of the Peninsular army, Craufurd was six years
junior to Picton, and one year junior to Hope. Graham, much his
senior in age, had only entered the army in 1793.
[263] Such as Shaw-Kennedy, William Campbell, Kincaid, and Lord
Seaton.
[264] For Craufurd’s life and personality see his biography by
his grandson the Rev. Alex. Craufurd, London, 1890. The most
vivid picture of him is in Rifleman Harris’s chronicle of the
Corunna retreat, a wonderful piece of narrative by a writer from
the ranks, who admired his general despite of all his severity,
and acknowledges that his methods were necessary. Though Napier
as a historian is on the whole fairly just to his old commander,
whose achievements were bound up indissolubly with the glories of
the Light Division, as a man he disliked Craufurd: in one of his
hooks which I possess (Delagrave’s _Campagne de Portugal_) he has
written in the margin several bitter personal remarks about him,
very unlike the language employed in his history. The unpublished
Journal of Colonel McLeod of the 43rd is (as Mr. Alex. Craufurd
informs me) written in the same spirit. So is Charles Napier’s
_Diary_.
From March to July 1810 Craufurd, in charge of the whole outpost
system of Wellington’s army, accomplished the extraordinary feat of
guarding a front of forty miles against an active enemy of sixfold
force, without suffering his line to be pierced, or allowing the
French to gain any information whatever of the dispositions of
the host in his rear. He was in constant and daily touch with
Ney’s corps, yet was never surprised, and never thrust back save
by absolutely overwhelming strength; he never lost a detachment,
never failed to detect every move of the enemy, and never sent
his commander false intelligence. This was the result of system
and science, not merely of vigilance and activity. The journal of
his aide de camp Shaw-Kennedy, giving the daily work of the Light
Division during the critical months of 1810, might serve as an
illustrative manual of outpost duty, and was indeed printed for that
purpose in 1851[265].
[265] As an Appendix to Lord F. Fitz-Clarence’s _Manual of
Outpost Duties_.
Craufurd’s one cavalry regiment, the German Hussars, had to cover
a front of nearly forty miles, and performed the duty admirably;
it had been chosen for the service because it was considered by
Wellington superior in scouting power to any of his British light
cavalry corps. ‘General Craufurd worked out the most difficult
part of the outpost duty with them. He had the great advantage of
speaking German fluently, and he arranged for the outpost duties of
the different parts of the long line that he had to guard by his
personal communications with the captains of that admirable corps,
men who were themselves masters of the subject. They each knew his
plan for the space that they covered, though not his general plan,
and each worked out his part most admirably. The General communicated
with them direct. He had the great advantage of possessing, with
his great abilities and energy, uncommon bodily strength, so that
he could remain on horseback almost any length of time.... When
his operations began, the point to be observed was the line of the
Agueda, extending for some forty miles. The country, although very
irregular in its surface, was quite open and unenclosed, and fit
almost everywhere for the action of all three arms. When he took up
the line he kept his infantry back entirely, with the exception of
four companies of the Rifles above the bridge of Barba del Puerco,
upon the _calculation_ of the time that would be required to retire
the infantry behind the Coa, after he received information from the
cavalry of the enemy’s advance. If we are properly to understand
Craufurd’s operations, the _calculation_ must never be lost sight
of, for it was on calculations that he acted all along. The
hazarding of the four companies at Barba del Puerco forms a separate
consideration: it rested on the belief that the pass there was so
difficult, that four companies could defend it against any numbers,
and that, if they were turned higher up the river, the Hussars would
give the Rifles warning in ample time for a safe retreat.... Special
reports were made of the state of the fords of the Agueda _every_
morning, and the rapidity of its rises was particularly marked.
An officer had special charge of all deserters from the enemy, to
examine them and bring together their information[266]. Beacons were
prepared on conspicuous heights, so as to communicate information
as to the enemy’s offensive movements. To ensure against mistakes
in the night, pointers were kept at the stations of communication,
directed to the beacons.... As Napier has remarked in his History,
_seven minutes_ sufficed for the division to get under arms in the
middle of the night, and a quarter of an hour, night or day, to bring
it in order of battle to its alarm-posts, with the baggage loaded and
assembled at a convenient distance to the rear. And this not upon a
concerted signal, nor as a trial, but at all times and certain[267].’
[266] One of the most curious points in Shaw-Kennedy’s _Diary_
[p. 218] is that from the reports of deserters Craufurd succeeded
in reconstructing the exact composition of Ney’s corps, in
brigades and battalions, with a final error of only one battalion
and 2,000 men too few.
[267] Shaw-Kennedy, _Diary_, pp. 142 and 147.
To complete the picture it remains to be added that there were some
fifteen fords between Ciudad Rodrigo and the mouth of the Agueda,
which were practicable in dry weather for all arms, and that several
of them could be used even after a day or two of rain. The French
were along the whole river; they had 3,000 horse available in March
and April, 5,000 in May and June. Their infantry at some points were
only three or four miles back from the river: yet Craufurd’s line was
never broken, nor was even a picket of ten men cut off or surrounded.
The least movement of the enemy was reported along the whole front in
an incredibly short time, the whole web of communication quivered at
the slightest touch, and the division was immediately ready to fight
or to draw back, according as the strength of the French dictated
boldness or caution.
During February Wellington had rightly concluded that Craufurd had
nothing to fear; Ney’s early demonstration against Ciudad Rodrigo
had no more serious significance than Mortier’s similar appearance
in front of Badajoz. But when March arrived, and the 8th Corps
appeared in the plains of Leon and commenced the siege of Astorga,
while Ney began to move up his cavalry to the line of the Yeltes,
and Loison’s division, coming from Astorga, established itself on
the lower Agueda, it seemed likely that serious work would soon
begin. The first test of the efficiency of Craufurd’s outpost system
was made on the night of March 19-20, when Ferey, commanding the
brigade of Loison’s division which lay at San Felices, assembled his
six voltigeur companies before dawn, and made a dash at the pass of
Barba del Puerco. He had the good luck to bayonet the sentries at
the bridge before they could fire, and was half way up the rough
ascent from the bridge to the village, when Beckwith’s detachment
of the 95th Rifles, roused and armed in ten minutes, were upon him.
They drove him down the defile, and chased him back across the river
with the loss of two officers and forty-five men killed and wounded.
Beckwith’s riflemen lost one officer and three men killed, and ten
men wounded in the three companies engaged. After this alarm Craufurd
was in anxious expectation of a general advance of the 6th Corps, and
made every preparation to receive them. But Ferey’s reconnaissance
had no sequel, and a whole month passed by without any serious move
on the part of the enemy. The Agueda was in flood for the greater
part of April, owing to incessant rains, which made the outpost work
simple, as the number of points to be observed went down from fifteen
to three or four. It was not till the twenty-sixth that Maucune’s
and Ferey’s brigades moved up close to Ciudad Rodrigo, drove in the
Spanish outposts, and formed the blockade of the place on the east
side of the Agueda. Even then its bridge remained unmolested, and
Craufurd could communicate quite freely with the garrison, and did
so till June 2nd. Masséna at a later date blamed Ney for having
established this partial and useless blockade before he was ready
to commence the siege in earnest. The two French brigades consumed,
during the month of May, the whole of the local resources of the
district around Rodrigo, so that, when the rest of the army came
up, all supplies had to be brought up from a great distance. It may
also be remarked that to advance a corps of no more than 7,000 men
within striking distance of the British army would have been very
hazardous, if Wellington had been entertaining any designs of taking
the offensive--and Ney at this time could not have been sure that
such a contingency was unlikely. The only advantage which the Marshal
got from keeping his detachment so close to the fortress was that,
in their month of waiting, the brigades were able to prepare a great
store of gabions and fascines, and the engineers to make a thorough
survey of the environs.
Ciudad Rodrigo stands on a single circular knoll of no great height,
whose summit it exactly covers. It is a small place of some 8,000
souls, packed tight in narrow streets within a stout mediaeval wall
thickly set with towers. A fourteenth-century castle, on which the
houses press in too close for strength, fills its south-eastern
corner: there is no other inner place of refuge. The Agueda, divided
into several channels, runs under the southern side of the place; it
is crossed by a bridge completely commanded by the fire of the walls.
On the water-front the knoll is at its highest, on the opposite face
it is much less steep, and only very slightly exceeds the level of
the surrounding ground. Round the circuit of the mediaeval wall a
low modern enceinte had been constructed, and served as an outer
protection (_fausse-braye_); it was only twelve feet high, so did not
shield more than a third of the inner wall, which could be battered
over its summit. Its outline was zigzagged in the form of redans, and
it was furnished with a dry ditch. Its glacis, owing to the rising of
the knoll, gave it little protection, so that both the older and the
modern wall could be searched, for the greater part of their height,
by the artillery of a besieger. Outside the eastern gate of Rodrigo
lies the straggling suburb of San Francisco, on very low ground. It
was so large and so close to the walls that the governor Herrasti
considered it absolutely necessary to take it inside the circuit
of his defences. It had accordingly been surrounded by a strong
earthwork, and the three great monasteries which it contains--San
Francisco, San Domingo, and Santa Clara--had been strengthened and
loopholed. The small suburb of La Marina, just across the bridge, was
retrenched and manned, as was also the convent of Santa Cruz, which
stands isolated 200 yards outside the north-west angle of the town.
Other outlying buildings had been levelled to the ground, lest they
should afford cover to the enemy.
[Illustration: SIEGE OF CIUDAD RODRIGO]
These preparations were very wise and helpful, but they did not do
away with the main weakness of Ciudad Rodrigo considered as a modern
fortress. Like many other mediaeval strongholds it is commanded
by outlying heights, which could be disregarded as an element of
danger in the fourteenth or the sixteenth century, because of their
distance, but became all-important with the improvement of artillery.
In this case two knolls, considerably higher than that on which the
place stands, lie outside its northern walls. The smaller, named the
Little Teson, lies only 200 yards from the northern angle of the
town; it is some fifty feet higher than the base of the ramparts.
Immediately behind it rises the Great Teson, which dominates the
whole country-side, its broad flat top, three-quarters of a mile in
diameter, being a hundred feet above the level of the plain. It was
hopeless to think of holding the little Teson as an outwork, since
the greater one looks down into it and searches it from end to end.
The Great Teson, on the other hand, is so large--its circuit is about
the same as the city itself--that it would be impossible to think
of defending it, as when entrenched it would require a garrison of
at least 3,000 men, and Herrasti had but 5,500 troops under his
command. Its slopes, moreover, are gentle, and do not lend themselves
to fortification. The southern edge of the plateau of the Great Teson
being only 500 yards from the town wall, it was obvious that here
was the place from which Rodrigo could best be assailed. Batteries
on its sky-line could breach both the inner and outer walls, and
could command every square foot both of the town and of the fortified
suburbs. Accordingly the brigades which lay before the place in
May had encamped on and behind the Teson, and stored the gabions,
fascines, and sandbags which they were making in a park, near the
convent of La Caridad and the village of Pedro de Toro, on its
further side.
Herrasti, as we have said, had a garrison of 5,500 men, composed of
one line battalion, two militia battalions, three battalions of new
levies from the town and its vicinity, called ‘Voluntarios de Ciudad
Rodrigo,’ and one battalion of ‘Urban Guards[268].’ None of these
troops, save the line battalion of Majorca (which had formed part of
the old Army of Estremadura) had ever been under fire--a fact which
makes their fine defence all the more creditable. There were only
11 officers and 37 men of the artillery of the line in the place:
these had to train 350 men assigned to them from the infantry; but
fortunately the long delay in the opening of the siege had allowed
the instruction to be thoroughly carried out. Of engineers there were
only 4 officers and 60 sappers--of cavalry none--but the partisan
chief Julian Sanchez with some 200 of his Lancers chanced to be in
the place on the day when it was completely invested, and was forced
to cut his way out when the bombardment began. Perhaps the main
strength of Ciudad Rodrigo, as of Gerona, lay in the personality of
its governor. General Andrés Herrasti, a veteran of nearly seventy
years, was determined to do his duty, and showed as much ingenuity
and readiness as obstinacy in his defence.
[268] Herrasti’s report gives 1st of Majorca 706 officers and
men, Avila and Segovia militia 857 and 317 respectively, three
battalions of volunteers of Ciudad Rodrigo 2,242, Urban guard
750, artillery 375, sappers 60; total, with some details added,
5,510, not including Sanchez’s Partida. See Belmas, iii. 314.
Though the French had appeared before the walls of Ciudad Rodrigo
on April 26th, it was not till May 30th that Ney came up in person,
with four brigades of infantry and Montbrun’s division of reserve
cavalry, to complete the investment. The main cause of the delay was,
as usual, the lack of supplies. Ney had to levy and forward from
Salamanca two months’ rations for an army of 30,000 men, and could
only do so after long and harassing preparation. He nearly came to
actual blows with King Joseph over the matter, for he sent a cavalry
brigade to raise requisitions in the province of Avila, which was
outside his command, and General Hugo, the King’s governor, put his
troops under arms and refused to allow the dragoons to enter his
district. An imperial rescript, however, soon arrived, which placed
Avila at the disposition of the 6th Corps, and the royal authorities
had to yield[269].
[269] See Sprünglin’s _Journal_, p. 417.
All Ney’s troops were now concentrated for the siege, his outlying
detachments in every direction having been relieved by Junot, who,
at Masséna’s orders, brought down the 8th Corps from the Douro,
placed a brigade to watch the Pass of Baños, left garrisons in
Zamora and Toro, and advanced with the remainder of his troops to
the line of the Agueda. Clausel’s division and St. Croix’s division
of dragoons took post at San Felices, in immediate touch with
Craufurd’s division. Solignac’s division lay a march and a half to
the rear at Ledesma. San Felices is only 20, Ledesma is 40 miles
from Ciudad Rodrigo, so that the 8th Corps, deducting the outlying
brigades, could have joined Ney in two days. These distances were
the governing factor in Wellington’s policy during the next month.
Ney had 26,000 men of the 6th Corps and Montbrun’s 4,000 dragoons in
front of Rodrigo; Junot could join him with 8,000 infantry and 1,800
cavalry in a day; a second day would bring up Solignac with 7,000
men more. Unless the 6th Corps could be surprised in its camps, and
forced to fight before it received its reinforcements, there would
be 47,000 French to face. Of their numbers Wellington was roughly
aware; the figures sent in to him by Craufurd were accurate to within
a few thousands[270], and estimated the enemy at 40,000 men. The
Commander-in-Chief’s own calculation was even nearer the truth; early
in May he reckoned Ney, with Loison’s division included, at 30,000
men, Junot and Kellermann at 30,000[271]. Early in June he made out
that the two corps in his front, without Kellermann, amounted to
50,000 men[272], which was only 3,000 over the true total. He himself
had at this moment only 18,000 British troops under his hand, and
within striking distance. He had on April 27th, brought up his head
quarters and the 1st Division to Celorico, and moved forward Picton
and the 3rd Division to Pinhel, while Cole with the 4th remained at
Guarda, and the Light Division was, as usual, facing the Agueda. The
cavalry had also come up from the Mondego valley, and lay behind
Almeida. Moreover, the five Portuguese brigades of Harvey, Collins,
Pack, Coleman, and Alex. Campbell were ordered up to the front[273],
and joined the army in the first days of May. Wellington thereupon
incorporated Harvey’s brigade with the 3rd Division and Collins’s
with the 4th, a system which he afterwards carried out with nearly
all the Portuguese units. The whole of this mass of troops came to
some 15,000 men[274]. These, with the British, making a total of
32,000 men, were all that Wellington could count upon, for he could
not dare to move Hill’s 12,000 men from the south, where they were
observing Reynier, nor to displace the small reserve, which lay at
Abrantes and Thomar to guard against a possible French move along the
Tagus by Castello Branco. Lisbon could not be left unprotected on
this side, so long as Reynier lay between the Tagus and the Guadiana.
[270] May 2, to Craufurd.
[271] On June 1 Craufurd calculated the troops in front of Ciudad
Rodrigo, by counting regiments and battalions, at over 25,000
men. There were really 30,000, and the under-estimate came
from allowing only 550 men to a battalion, while they really
averaged 650. About the same time Craufurd estimated the parts
of Junot’s corps in the neighbourhood to be 13,000 men: they
were really nearly 17,000. The cause of error was the same. See
Shaw-Kennedy’s _Diary_, pages 190-5. The estimates are corrected,
on fuller information, early in July, see ibid., p. 220.
[272] To Charles Stuart, June 8, and to Hill, June 9.
[273] This movement, unchronicled elsewhere, appears in D’Urban’s
diary, April 26. ‘The Portuguese ordered to the front, consisting
of two brigades of artillery, 4th and 6th Caçadores, 1st and 16th
(Pack), 7th and 19th (Coleman), 6th and 18th (Alex. Campbell),
11th and 23rd (Collins), 9th and 21st (Harvey) of the Line. They
all go into march on the 28th, and will arrive by successive
brigades at Celorico in four days.’
[274] At this moment the total force of the allied army was:--
1st Division (all British) 6,000 bayonets.
3rd ” British 2,500 with Harvey’s Portuguese 1,800
4th ” ” 4,000 with Collins’s ” 2,500
Light ” ” 2,500 with 2 Caçador Batts. 1,000
Pack’s, Campbell’s, and Coleman’s Portuguese brigades 8,000
Cavalry (British) 2,100 Portuguese 700
Artillery ” 1,000 Portuguese 600
------ ------
18,100 14,600
By bringing up every man Wellington could have attacked Ney’s
30,000 in front of Rodrigo with 33,000, of whom nearly half would
have consisted of the newly organised Portuguese brigades, of which
hardly a battalion had been under fire. He would have had under 3,000
cavalry to face 5,000, and a marked inferiority in artillery also. No
practical assistance could have been got by inviting the co-operation
of Martin Carrera’s depleted Spanish division of 3,000 men, which
lay on the hills about the sources of the Agueda, watching Ney’s
flank. If the first stroke should fail, and Ney were not surprised,
Wellington would have Junot’s 17,000 men to count with within
forty-eight hours. Ciudad Rodrigo lies on a plain, a full day’s march
from the hills, and by advancing to relieve it the British army must
commit itself to an action in the open. It is no wonder then that
Wellington refused to attempt the movement; weak in cavalry and with
15,000 troops of uncertain value in his ranks, he would have been mad
to embark upon such an operation. It was most improbable that Ney
could have been surprised, and forced to fight without Junot’s aid,
when he had 5,000 horsemen at hand, to discover and report the first
movement of the Anglo-Portuguese. Napoleon had been right when he
told Masséna that it was practically impossible that Wellington would
offer battle in the plains. Herrasti had been sent assurances that
the British army would do anything that was feasible for his relief,
but he was warned in a supplementary letter of June 6th that it might
be impossible to aid him. ‘You will believe,’ wrote Wellington, ‘that
if I should not be able to attempt your relief, it will be owing
to the superior strength of the enemy, and to the necessity for my
attending to other important objects[275].’ Notwithstanding this
caution it would appear that the Spanish governor still hoped for
prompt assistance. It seemed to him, as it did to all Spanish and
some English officers at the time[276], that Wellington would not
be able to endure the spectacle of Ciudad Rodrigo being taken while
his outposts were lying only six miles in front of it. Those who
held such views little knew the inflexible character of the man with
whom they had to deal, or his contempt for considerations of pride
or sentiment. To take a great risk, when victory would mean only the
raising of the siege of Rodrigo till Junot and Kellermann should have
joined Ney, while defeat might mean the loss of Portugal, was not in
consonance with Wellington’s character. The possible gain and loss
were too unequal, and he very rightly, and not without much regret,
remained in observation at Celorico[277]. He sums up the matter
thus:--‘I must leave the mountains and cross the plains, as well as
two rivers, to raise the siege. To do this I have about 33,000 men
(including Carrera’s Spaniards), of which 3,000 are cavalry[278].
Included are 15,000 Spaniards and Portuguese, which troops (to say
the best of them) are of doubtful quality. Is it right, under these
circumstances, to risk a general action to raise the siege of Ciudad
Rodrigo? I should think not[279].’ And again, ‘My object is to be
able to relieve the place, if it should be advisable to attempt it,
in consequence of any alteration in the enemy’s force. This does
not appear to be a very probable event at present, and ought not to
be provided for according to the common rules of prudence, at any
considerable risk[280].’ Expressions of regret are added, ‘I do not
give the matter up; if they hold out like men they are worth saving,
and under certain circumstances it might be possible to “incur the
risk.”’ But the ‘certain circumstances’ never came about; they seem
to have been the possibility either that (1) Ney or Junot might make
detachments, or move their corps into a less concentrated position
than they at present occupied, or (2) that they might form a covering
army, and advance to drive him off from his present quarters, which
were too close to Ciudad Rodrigo for their comfort. This last
contingency almost happened, as we shall see; probably if the enemy
had come out to attack him Wellington would have accepted battle, in
one of the defensive positions that he knew so well how to select.
[275] _Dispatches_, vi. p. 172.
[276] D’Urban, for example, wrote in his journal on June 18 that
he took the daring step of suggesting a surprise attack on Ney to
the General. No notice was taken of his suggestion.
[277] Picton summed up the situation in a letter to a friend [see
Robinson’s _Life of Picton_, i. 273] very clearly: ‘If we attempt
to relieve the place the French will drive us out of Portugal:
while if they get possession of it, they will lose time, which is
more important to them than Ciudad Rodrigo. But they have got to
find this out.’
[278] A slight under-estimate, as it would seem, for with La
Carrera’s force the whole would have been 36,000 sabres and
bayonets. Of the 3,000 cavalry 700 were Portuguese and 300
Spaniards.
[279] Wellington to Henry Wellesley, June 20.
[280] Wellington to Craufurd, June 24.
Ney, as has been already mentioned, arrived before the fortress with
some 20,000 men on May 30th. On June 1st he threw a bridge across the
Agueda, a mile and a half above Rodrigo, but sent no troops across
it. Two days later Masséna came up from the rear, approved of the
plan that had been formed for breaching the city from the side of the
two Tesons, and, having reviewed the 6th Corps, took his way back
to Salamanca. At this moment he gave orders to Reynier and the 2nd
Corps to leave Truxillo and the valley of the Guadiana, and to cross
the Tagus to Coria and Plasencia, from whence they could threaten
Castello Branco and Abrantes. This was in accordance with the orders
of the Emperor, who had bidden him call up Reynier from the Guadiana,
to cover his flank. Such a movement had been foreseen by Wellington,
who as early as June 9th had directed Hill to leave Portalegre with
his 12,000 men, and to cross the Tagus at Villa Velha the moment
that Reynier should have passed it at Almaraz[281]. Some days later
the Galician general Mahy sent to the British head quarters four
duplicates of Napoleon’s dispatches to Masséna and King Joseph, which
had been intercepted by guerrillas on the way to Salamanca[282]. They
corroborated all Wellington’s suspicions, and enabled him to provide
against the danger on this side even before it had begun to arise.
Hill’s route by Villa Velha being appreciably shorter than that of
Reynier, he was in position beyond the Tagus before the 2nd Corps had
reached Coria. Their cavalry met and skirmished at Ladoeiro on the
Zarza-Castello Branco road on July 22nd. Thus the relative position
of the two hostile forces in the south was exactly preserved:
Wellington knew that he could call in Hill to join his main army as
quickly as Masséna could draw Reynier to himself through the Pass of
Perales--the only route possible for him. He felt all the more secure
because he had now some British troops at Abrantes ready to support
Hill. Three newly arrived battalions[283], which landed at Lisbon
early in April, had been passed up the Tagus to Thomar and the line
of the Zezere, where, uniting with two Portuguese brigades, they
formed Leith’s ‘5th Division,’ a fresh factor in the situation. This
detachment, with two batteries added, could assist Hill with 7,000
men, if Reynier should push forward in the direction of Castello
Branco.
[281] Wellington to Hill, July 9.
[282] These were Napoleon’s dispatches nos. 16,505, 16,519-20,
and 16,504, as is shown by the excellent analysis of them given
by D’Urban in his diary. He read them over with Beresford on July
1. No. 16,519 was very valuable, as giving the exact strength
of the 2nd, 6th, and 8th Corps--the first absolutely certain
analysis of them that Wellington obtained.
[283] These were the 3/1st, 1/9th, 2/38th, which arrived at
Lisbon April 1-8. Leith’s division was formally constituted only
on July 15, but really existed since June.
Whether at this moment Masséna was proposing to order a serious
attack on this side, or whether he was from the first intending
to bring up the 2nd Corps to join the main army, is not certain.
Napoleon in some of his dispatches seems to recommend the rather
hazardous ‘attack on double external lines’--a result of his general
under-estimate of Wellington’s resisting power. On May 29th he
told his lieutenant that with 50,000 men of the 6th and 8th Corps
he could capture both Ciudad Rodrigo and Almeida, and then march
‘methodically’ into Portugal, while Reynier at Alcantara could cover
the communication with Madrid and menace Upper Beira; ‘le prince le
maintiendra dans cette position sans le laisser entamer.’ Masséna,
however, did not think his main army strong enough, and, being left
a free hand by his master, ultimately called in Reynier to join him,
and so freed Wellington from the harassing doubt as to whether he
might not have to defend himself on the Zezere and on the Mondego at
the same moment.
Long before the orders reached the 2nd Corps to move up from Truxillo
to Coria and Zarza, the siege of Rodrigo had begun in earnest. On
June 1st, as we have already seen, Ney had cast a bridge across the
Agueda above the town; four days later a second was constructed at
the ford of Lora, below the place. The moment that it was completed,
Marchand’s division, half Mermet’s, and the light cavalry brigade
of Lamotte crossed the river and established camps on its western
bank. The horsemen pushed back Craufurd’s pickets to Marialva and
Manzanilla, and completely cut his communication with Rodrigo, which
had hitherto been intermittently open. The troops which had passed
the river threw up redoubts to cover the bridge heads, and slightly
entrenched their camps. On June 8th Ney received the first convoy of
his siege train, which continued to come in by detachments during the
next week, till he had fifty heavy guns in hand, with 700 rounds for
each, and 2,000 gunners and sappers of the ‘Grand Park[284].’
[284] See the Emperor’s dispatches to Berthier of May 27 and May
29.
On the 15th the French opened their first parallel on the Great
Teson, on a front of 1,500 yards; it was only 500 yards from the
glacis of the town. Herrasti kept up a furious fire upon it, and
vexed the workmen by two sorties, which were not pressed home and
did no harm. On the 19th six batteries on the Teson were commenced;
the work was easy owing to the great store of gabions and sandbags
already in store, which the brigades of Maucune and Ferey had
prepared in May. While the emplacements for the guns were being got
ready, the sappers pushed forward zig-zags from the right end of the
first parallel down the slopes on the flank of the Little Teson. One
approach was directed toward the isolated convent of Santa Cruz, the
other toward the extreme northern angle of the town. The Spaniards,
though firing furiously day and night, could not prevent either the
construction of the batteries or the advance of the approaches;
wherefore Julian Sanchez, seeing that his cavalry could not live
under the oncoming bombardment, got leave from the governor to quit
the town. On the night of the 21st-22nd he crossed the bridge, broke
through the lines of Marchand’s division, and escaped by the Fuente
Guinaldo road with his 200 Lancers. He came into Craufurd’s camp, and
gave a full report of the state of the garrison and the progress of
the enemy’s works.
It was impossible for the French to open their second parallel so
long as the convent of Santa Cruz was held, for the fire of this
outwork would have enfiladed its whole length. On the night of
the 23rd-24th, therefore, Ney tried to storm the convent with a
picked body of Grenadiers; they blew in its door with a petard,
and set fire to its lower story, but were finally driven off. The
convent was partially destroyed, but the garrison gallantly clung
to its ruins, and covered themselves in the débris. The French
lost fifteen killed and fifty wounded that night. On June 25th the
batteries opened, without waiting for the reduction of Santa Cruz,
with forty-six guns placed in six batteries along the crest of the
Teson. The counter-fire of the besieged was very effective; two
expense magazines containing 9,000 lb. of powder were blown up in the
trenches, many guns dismounted, and one battery silenced. The loss of
the besiegers was heavy[285]. The Spaniards suffered less, but fires
broke out in several quarters of the town from the shells thrown by
the French mortars, and many houses were destroyed. The ruins of
the convent of Santa Cruz, moreover, were so thoroughly battered to
pieces that the garrison retired, when an assault was made upon it
by 300 Grenadiers after nightfall. This enabled the French to push
forward their works much nearer to the town.
[285] Masséna came up from Salamanca this day to inspect the
bombardment, and made (as was his wont) a rather mendacious
report thereon to the Emperor, declaring that the French loss
had been 12 killed and 41 wounded, whereas it had exceeded 100
[see Belmas, iii. p. 233], and that the defence of the place was
seriously impaired--which it was not as yet.
Four days of furious artillery engagement followed, in which the
besiegers, though suffering heavily, succeeded not only in setting
more than half the town on fire, but, what was more serious, in
making a breach in the fausse-braye, at the projecting angle of the
north side of the city, on which four of the batteries had been
trained, and in injuring the inner mediaeval wall at the back of it.
Believing, wrongly as it seems, that the breach was practicable, Ney
sent an officer to summon the town. Herrasti replied that he was
still in a position to defend himself, and ‘that after forty-nine
years of service he knew the laws of war and his military duty.’ He
made, however, the unusual request that he might be allowed to send a
letter to Wellington, and that a suspension of arms should be granted
till the return of his messenger. The Marshal, as was natural, sent a
refusal, and ordered the bombardment to recommence (June 28th).
Up to this moment the French engineers had been under the impression
that Ciudad Rodrigo would probably surrender when it had been
breached, without standing an assault. Now that they recognized
that the governor intended to fight to the last, and noted that he
had spent the night following the summons in clearing the ditch and
repairing the damaged fausse-braye with sandbags, they resolved that
the breaching batteries must be brought closer in, and the approaches
pushed up to the foot of the walls. Accordingly a second parallel was
opened along the front of the Little Teson, two hundred and fifty
yards in advance of the first, on the night of July 1st. On the same
night a column of 600 men stormed the convent of San Francisco in
the suburb, a post which would have enfiladed the southern end of
the new parallel in the most dangerous fashion. Having obtained this
lodgement in the suburb the French set to work to conquer the whole
of it, and after some stiff street-fighting stormed Santa Clara, its
central stronghold. Herrasti thereupon evacuated the rest of the
scattered houses, and withdrew all his troops inside the town (July
3rd).
The new battery on the Little Teson was costly to build and
maintain--on one night the French lost sixty-one men killed and
wounded in it[286]. But it was very effective; the original breach
was much enlarged, and the old wall behind it was reduced to ruins.
Meanwhile a mortar battery, placed in the conquered suburb, played
upon the parts of the town which had hitherto escaped bombardment,
and reduced many streets to ashes. The position of the garrison
was unsatisfactory, and Herrasti sent out several emissaries to
beg Wellington to help him, ere it was too late. Most of these
adventurers were captured by the French, but at least two reached
the British commander[287], who had recently come up to the front
to observe for himself the state of the enemy’s forces. He found
them too strong to be meddled with, and sent back a letter stating
that he was ready to move if he saw any chance of success, but that
at present none such was visible. He then retired, after leaving
Craufurd two squadrons of the 16th Light Dragoons to strengthen his
thin outpost line. Herrasti, though much dispirited by Wellington’s
reply, continued to make a vigorous defence, but the town was now
mostly in ruins, and the breach gaped wide.
[286] Belmas, iii. 245, July 2.
[287] See Shaw-Kennedy’s _Diary_, pp. 208-9 and 211.
On July 4th Masséna, who had again come up to visit the siege,
obtained intelligence that Wellington had been with the Light
Division at Gallegos, and determined to push back the British
outposts, in order to discover whether the front line of his enemy
had been strengthened by any troops from Portugal. It seemed to
him likely enough that the British general might have massed his
army for a bold stroke at the besiegers, now that the strength of
Ciudad Rodrigo was running low. Accordingly St. Croix’s division
of dragoons, supported by a brigade of Junot’s infantry, crossed
the Azava brook and drove in Craufurd’s cavalry pickets. They
retired, skirmishing vigorously all the way, to Gallegos, where the
five infantry battalions of the Light Division had concentrated.
Craufurd, having strict orders from his chief that he was not to
fight, fell back on Fort Concepcion, the work on the Spanish frontier
half way to Almeida. Thereupon the French retired, having obtained
the information that they wanted, viz. that Craufurd had not been
reinforced by any considerable body of troops from the rear. The
Light Division had manœuvred with its customary intelligence and
alertness all day; its flanks were being continually turned by
horsemen in overpowering numbers, but it beat them off with ease,
and lost only five men wounded while falling back across ten miles
of absolutely open country. The French lost five officers and over
twenty men[288], mostly in combats with the German Hussars, who
surpassed themselves on this day, and repeatedly charged the heads
of the hostile columns on favourable occasions. For the future
Craufurd kept behind the Dos Casas, while the French took up his old
line on the Azava. This move made any attempt to help Ciudad Rodrigo
a harder business than before, since the British outposts were now
fifteen instead of only six miles from the town. An attempt to storm
by surprise the French camps on the near side of the place was for
the future impossible.
[288] Belmas, iii. 250. For the conduct of the Hussars see
Beamish’s _German Legion_, i. pp. 274-6. Martinien’s lists show
that the 1st French dragoons lost one, the 2nd three, and the 4th
one officer on this day.
Warned by this activity on the part of the enemy, Wellington again
reinforced Craufurd’s cavalry, giving him three squadrons of the 14th
Light Dragoons, so that the Light Division had now some 1,200 horse
to watch its long and much exposed front. But the French advance now
halted again for a full fortnight, the demonstration of July 4th
having had no other purpose than that of ascertaining the strength of
the British observing force behind the Azava.
On the four days that followed Craufurd’s retreat the French
batteries were thundering against the northern angle of Ciudad
Rodrigo, and had reduced it to one vast breach more than 120 feet
broad. But Ney, more sparing of life than was his wont, refused to
order an assault till the whole of the Spanish artillery on the
neighbouring front should have been silenced, and till the engineers
should have worked up to and blown in the counterscarp. This last
preliminary was accomplished on the night of the eighth, when a mine
containing 800 lb. of powder was exploded with success just outside
the counterscarp, and cast down a vast amount of earth into the
ditch, so that there was now an almost level road from the advanced
trenches to the foot of the inner wall. The garrison repeatedly built
up the lip of the breach with palisades and sandbags, under a heavy
fire and at great expense of life. But their flimsy repairs were
swept away again and again by the batteries on the Little Teson, and
all their guns on this front of the walls were gradually disabled or
destroyed. Early on the afternoon of July 9th the engineers informed
the Marshal that Ciudad Rodrigo was untenable, and that a storm could
not fail of success. Three battalions, composed of picked voltigeur
and grenadier companies, were brought up to the advanced trenches,
under the Marshal’s personal superintendence. Before letting them
loose on the broad acclivity of rubble before them, Ney asked for
three volunteers who would take the desperate risk of climbing up
to the crest of the breach to see if it were retrenched behind. A
corporal and two privates made this daring venture, ran lightly up
to the summit, fired their muskets into the town, and descended
unhurt, under a scattering fire from the few Spaniards who were still
holding on to the ruins. On receiving their assurance that nothing
was to be feared, Ney ordered the storming battalions to move out
of the trenches, but ere they had started an officer with a white
flag appeared on the breach, and descended to inform the Marshal
that the Governor was prepared to capitulate. Finding that Ney was
immediately below, Herrasti came out in person with his staff a few
minutes later, and settled the whole matter in a short conversation.
Ney congratulated the white-haired veteran on his handsome defence,
returned him his sword, and told him that he should have all the
honours of war.
Accordingly the garrison marched out next morning about 4,000 strong,
laid down its arms below the glacis, and was marched off to Bayonne.
The Spaniards had lost 461 killed and 994 wounded, just a quarter of
their force, in their highly honourable resistance. They had only a
few days’ provisions left, and, though their munitions were by no
means exhausted, they would have been forced to yield for want of
food, even if the storm had failed, which was absolutely impossible.
The French captured 118 guns, most of them in bad order or disabled,
and 7,000 muskets. Not a house or church in the place was intact,
and a large majority were roofless or levelled to the ground. There
was no use whatever in protracting the resistance, and it is clear
that Herrasti had done all that a good officer could. In his dispatch
to the Junta he spoke somewhat bitterly of the fact that Wellington
had made no effort to relieve the place, showing feeling natural
enough under the circumstances. Martin La Carrera, who had been
commanding the Spanish division that lay in the mountains south of
the town, expressed his wrath still more bitterly, and marched off
to Estremadura in high dudgeon, the moment that the news of the
surrender reached him.
The French had been forced to much greater exertions in the siege
of Rodrigo than they had expected when they first sat down before
its walls. Their artillery had thrown 11,000 shells and 18,000
round shot into the place, which almost exhausted their store of
munitions--only 700 rounds for each of their fifty guns having been
provided. They had lost 180 killed and over 1,000 wounded, mainly in
the costly work of pushing forward the approaches towards the wall,
before the Spanish artillery fire had been silenced. Professional
critics attributed the delays and losses of the siege entirely to
the fact that the engineers believed, when they first planned their
works, that the enemy would surrender the moment that a breach had
been made, an idea which had never entered into Herrasti’s head[289].
Masséna showed his ill-temper, when all was over, by sending the
civilian members of the Junta as prisoners to France, and imposing a
fine of 500,000 francs on the miserable ruined town. It is surprising
to learn that he actually succeeded in extracting half that sum from
the homeless and starving population.
[289] See the criticisms in Belmas, iii. 259. Compare the views
of the artilleryman Hulot, pages 306-9 of his autobiography.
On the day that the garrison of Rodrigo marched out (July 10)
Craufurd had suffered a misadventure. Seeing that the French foragers
were busy in the villages between the Azava and the Dos Casas, he
had resolved to make an attempt to surprise some of their bands, and
went out from Fort Concepcion with six squadrons of cavalry[290],
six companies of the Rifles and the 43rd, a battalion of Caçadores
and two guns. Coming suddenly upon the French covering party near
the village of Barquilla, he ordered his cavalry to pursue them.
The enemy, consisting of two troops of dragoons and 200 men of the
22nd regiment from Junot’s corps, began a hasty retreat towards
their lines. Thereupon Craufurd bade his leading squadrons, one of
the German Hussars and one of the 16th, to charge[291]. They did
so, falling upon the infantry, who halted and formed square in a
corn-field to receive them. The charge, made by men who had been
galloping for a mile, and had been much disordered by passing some
enclosures, failed. The troopers, opening out to right and left under
the fire of the square, swept on and chased the French cavalry, who
were making off to the flank. They followed them for some distance,
finally overtaking them and making two officers and twenty-nine men
prisoners. Meanwhile Craufurd called up the next squadron from the
road, the leading one of the 14th Light Dragoons, and sent it in
against the little square. Headed by their colonel Talbot the men
of the 14th charged home, but were unable to break the French, who
stood firm and waited till the horses’ heads were within ten paces of
their bayonets before firing. Talbot and seven of his men fell dead,
and some dozen more were disabled. Before another squadron could
come up, the French slipped off into the enclosures of the village
of Cismeiro and got away. It was said that no effort was made to
stop them because two outlying squadrons of British cavalry[292],
which had ridden in towards the sound of the firing, were mistaken
for a large body of French horse coming up to the rescue of the
infantry. Both Craufurd and the British cavalry were much criticized
over this affair[293]; but it was, in truth, nothing more than an
example of the general rule that horsemen could not break steady
infantry, properly formed in square, during the Peninsular War. The
instances to the contrary are few. It was said at the time that
Craufurd might have used his leading squadrons to detain and harass
the French till his guns or his infantry, which were a mile to the
rear, could be brought up. This may have been so, but criticism after
the event is easy, and if the guns or the riflemen had come up ten
minutes late, and the French infantry had been allowed to go off
uncharged, the General would have been blamed still more. He lost in
all an officer and eight men killed, and twenty-three wounded, while
he took thirty-one prisoners, but the defeat rankled, and caused
so much unpleasant feeling that Wellington went out of his way to
send for and rebuke officers who had been circulating malevolent
criticism[294]. The French captain Gouache, who had commanded the
square, was very properly promoted and decorated by Masséna: nothing
could have been more firm and adroit than his conduct[295].
[290] Viz. three squadrons of the 14th, one (Krauchenberg’s)
of the 1st Hussars K.G.L., and two of the 16th. The other two
squadrons of the hussars, and the 4th squadron of the 14th, were
holding the outpost line to right and left.
[291] It is certain that both charged, and both were beaten off.
But the regimental diarists of the two regiments each mention
only the repulse of the squadron from the other corps. See
Tompkinson (of the 16th), _Diary_, p. 31, and Von Linsingen’s
letter (from the 1st Hussars), printed in Beamish, i. 279-80.
[292] Von Grüben’s squadron of the K.G.L. Hussars, and the fourth
squadron of the 14th Light Dragoons, neither of which formed part
of Craufurd’s little expedition. The former had been watching
Villa de Ciervo, the latter was on outpost duty.
[293] Charles Napier in his diary [_Life_, i. p. 132] and
Tomkinson [p. 31] accuse Craufurd of reckless haste. Harry Smith,
in his autobiography [i. p. 22], holds that the Rifles could have
got up in time to force the square to surrender. Leach [p. 142]
makes much the same comment. All these were eye-witnesses. Yet it
would have taken some time to bring up the guns or the infantry,
and the French were near broken ground, over which they might
have escaped, if not immediately assailed. See also Craufurd’s
Life by his grandson, pp. 114-16.
[294] Among these officers was General Stewart, the
adjutant-general, see Wellington to Craufurd, from Alverca, July
23, a very interesting letter, commented on in the _Life of
Craufurd_, pp. 117-20.
[295] Hulot (p. 36) says that he met the square retiring, and
noticed that numbers of the bayonets and gun-barrels had been cut
and bent by the blows of the English dragoons, as they tried to
force their way in. See Masséna’s dispatch to Berthier of Aug.
10, in Belmas’s _Pièces Justificatives_.
SECTION XIX: CHAPTER VI
COMBAT OF THE COA: SIEGE OF ALMEIDA (JULY-AUGUST 1810)
On July 10th the French had entered Ciudad Rodrigo, but ten days
more elapsed before they made any further advance. Masséna, who had
returned to the front, was resolved to follow his master’s orders
and to act ‘methodically.’ It was clearly incumbent on him to begin
the siege of Almeida as soon as possible, and, as that place is only
twenty-one miles from Ciudad Rodrigo, one long march would have
placed him before its walls. But since he had only a few thousand
rounds of ammunition left for his heavy guns, he refused to move on
till all the available reserves were on their way from Salamanca to
the front, and requisition for a further supply had been sent to
Bayonne. He had also to do his best to scrape together more food,
since the magazines that Ney had collected were nearly exhausted when
Rodrigo fell. Moreover, 1,500 draught animals had died during the
late siege, and it was necessary to replace them before the Great
Park could move forward.
On July 21st, however, some convoys having come up from Salamanca,
Masséna directed Ney to advance with the 6th Corps and to drive
Craufurd back on to Almeida. The main point that he was directed
to ascertain on this day was whether the English intended to make
a stand at Fort Concepcion, the isolated Spanish work which faces
Almeida on the frontier, beyond the Turones. This was a solid
eighteenth-century fort, covering the bridge where the high-road
passes the river. It had lately been repaired, and could have
resisted a bombardment for some days. But it would have required
a garrison of 1,000 men, and, since it lies in the midst of the
plain, there would be little chance of relieving it, if once it were
surrounded. Wellington, therefore, gave orders that it should be
blown up whenever the French should advance in force toward Almeida,
and that Craufurd should make no attempt to defend the line of the
Turones, and should send back his infantry to Junca, a village about
a mile outside the gates of Almeida[296], keeping his cavalry only
to the front. On the 21st Ney advanced with the whole of Loison’s
division, and Treillard’s cavalry brigade. Thereupon Craufurd, with
some reluctance, retired and blew up Fort Concepcion as he went. The
French advanced, skirmishing with the 14th Light Dragoons and the
German Hussars, but finally halted at Val de Mula, four miles from
Almeida. Craufurd established himself at Junca, only three miles
from the enemy’s line of pickets. On the next evening he received a
strong suggestion, if not quite an order, from his Chief to send his
infantry across the Coa. ‘I am not desirous of engaging an affair
beyond the Coa,’ wrote Wellington. ‘Under these circumstances, if
you are not covered from the sun where you are, would it not be
better that you should come to this side of it, with your infantry at
least[297]?’ The tentative form of the note well marks the confidence
that the Commander-in-Chief was wont to place in his subordinate’s
judgement. This time that confidence was somewhat misplaced, for
Craufurd tarried two days longer by the glacis of Almeida, and
thereby risked a disaster.
[296] Wellington to Craufurd from Alverca, July 16.
[297] Wellington to Craufurd from Alverca, July 22, 8 p.m.
It must be remembered that Almeida is not on the Coa, but two miles
from it, and that its guns, therefore, did not cover the one bridge
over which Craufurd could make his retreat. Indeed, that bridge and
the river also are invisible from Almeida. The fortress is slightly
raised above the level of the rolling plain, which extends as far
as Ciudad Rodrigo: the river flows in a deep bed, so much below the
plateau as to be lost to sight. Its ravine is a sort of cañon which
marks the end of the plains of Leon. It has often been remarked that
Almeida’s value would have been doubled, if only it had been on the
near side of the Coa, and commanded its bridge. But Portuguese kings
had built and rebuilt the old fortress on its original site, with no
regard for strategy. Craufurd, then, should have remembered that, if
he were suddenly attacked in his camp outside the gates, he risked
being thrown back into the town (the last thing he would wish), or
being hustled down to the bridge and forced to pass his division
across it in dangerous haste. But he had so often challenged, held
back, and evaded Ney’s and Junot’s advanced guards, that he evidently
considered that he was taking no very serious risk in staying where
he was. He was, moreover, discharging a valuable function by keeping
Almeida from being invested, as stores and munitions were still being
poured into the place. The only peril was that he might be attacked
both without warning and by overwhelming superiority of numbers,
with the defile at his back. Neither of these misadventures had yet
happened to him during the four and a half months while he had been
defying the 6th and the 8th Corps along the banks of the Agueda. The
French had never assailed him with much more than a division, nor had
they ever pressed on him with headlong speed, so as to prevent an
orderly retreat properly covered by a moderate rearguard.
Now, however, Ney, untrammelled by any other operation, had his
whole corps concentrated behind Val de Mula, and having learnt of
the defile that lay in Craufurd’s rear, thought that he might be
hurled into it and crushed or caught. Before dawn he arrayed his
whole 24,000 men in one broad and deep column. Two cavalry brigades,
Lamotte’s 3rd Hussars and 15th Chasseurs, and Gardanne’s 15th and
25th Dragoons, were in front. Then came the thirteen battalions of
Loison’s division, in a line of columns; behind them was Mermet with
eleven battalions more, while three regiments of Marchand’s division
(the fourth was garrisoning Ciudad Rodrigo) formed the reserve.
In a grey morning, following a night of bitter rain, the French
horsemen rode at the British cavalry pickets, and sent them flying
helter-skelter across the three miles of rolling ground that lay in
front of the Light Division. On hearing the fire of the carbines
Craufurd’s men turned out with their accustomed celerity, and in a
very short space were aligned to the right of Almeida, with their
flank only 800 yards from the glacis, and their front covered by a
series of high stone walls bounding suburban fields. There would have
been just enough time to get cavalry, guns, and impedimenta across
the bridge of the Coa if the General had started off at once. But,
not realizing the fearful strength that lay behind the French cavalry
advance, he resolved to treat himself to a rearguard action, and not
to go till he was pushed. On a survey of the ground it is easy to
understand the temptation, for it would be hard to find a prettier
battlefield for a detaining force, if only the enemy were in no more
than moderate strength. A long double-headed spur runs down from the
high plateau on which Almeida stands to the Coa. Successive points
of it can be held one after the other, and it is crossed by many
stone walls giving good cover for skirmishers. With his left covered
by the fire of the fortress, and his right ‘refused’ and trending
back towards the river, Craufurd waited to be attacked, intending
to give the leading French brigade a lesson. There was a delay of
more than an hour before the French infantry was up, but when the
assault came it was overwhelming. Craufurd’s line of three British
and two Portuguese battalions[298] was suddenly assaulted by Loison’s
thirteen, who came on at the _pas de charge_ ‘yelling, with drums
beating, and the officers, like mountebanks, running ahead with their
hats on their swords, capering like madmen and crying as they turned
to wave on their men, “Allons, enfants de la Patrie, le premier qui
s’avançera, Napoléon le recompensera[299].”’ The rolling fire of
the British stopped the first rush, when suddenly a French cavalry
regiment, the 3rd Hussars, charged across the interval between
Craufurd’s left and the walls of Almeida, braving the fire of the
ramparts in the most gallant style. Some fell, but the gunners were
flurried at this unexpected development, and fired wildly, so that
the hussars swept down unchecked on the extreme flank of the Light
Division, where a company of the 95th Rifles was annihilated[300],
and began riding along the rear of the line and rolling it up. They
were luckily checked for a moment by a stone wall, but Craufurd saw
that he must retreat at once, since he was turned on the side where
he had thought that he was safest. The cavalry and guns were ordered
to gallop for the bridge, the Caçadores to follow them, and the rest
of the infantry to fall back in échelon from the left, defending
each enclosure and fold of the hillside as long as possible. But it
is hard to make an orderly retreat when a foe with twofold strength
in his fighting line is pressing hard. Moreover, the road to the
bridge has an unfortunate peculiarity; instead of making straight for
its goal it overshoots it, in order to descend the slope at an easy
point, and then comes back along the river bank for a quarter of a
mile. The cavalry and guns, forced to keep to the road because the
hillside was too steep for them, had to cover two sides of a triangle
with a sharp turn at the apex, which delayed them terribly. To add
to the trouble an artillery caisson was upset at a sharp turn, and
took much trouble to right and send forward. Thus it chanced that
the covering infantry were driven down close to the bridge before
the Caçadores and the last of the guns had crossed the river. The
retreat of the three British battalions had been most perilous; at
one moment a wing of the 43rd found themselves checked by a vineyard
wall ten feet high, while the French were pressing hard on their
rear. They only escaped by shoving a long part of it over by sheer
strength--fortunately, like all other walls in this part of Portugal,
it was made of dry flat stones without mortar. Finally the 43rd, the
Rifles, and part of the 52nd were massed on a long knoll covered
with pine-trees, which lies above the bridge and completely masks it
against an attack from above. While they held firm, Craufurd ranged
the guns and the Caçadores on the slopes upon the other side, so as
to command the passage when the rest of the troops should have to
cross. He then began to withdraw the 43rd, and part of that battalion
had already crossed the water, when five companies of the 52nd,
which had occupied the extreme right wing of the division, were seen
hastening along the river bank some way above the bridge. They had
held out a little too long on the slopes above, and seemed likely to
be cut off, for the French, noting their position, made a vigorous
effort, and carried the knoll which protected their line of retreat
to the point of passage. This was a desperate crisis, but such was
the splendid courage and initiative of the regimental officers of the
Light Division that the disaster was averted. At one point Beckwith,
colonel of the Rifles, at another Major McLeod of the 43rd, called on
the disordered mass of men, who had been driven back to the bridge
head, to charge again and save the 52nd. The soldiers grasped the
situation, cheered and followed; they recaptured the knoll that they
had just lost, and held it for ten minutes more, gaining time for the
companies of the 52nd to pass behind and cross the bridge. ‘No one
present,’ wrote an eye-witness, ‘can fail to remember the gallantry
of Major McLeod. How either he or his horse escaped being blown to
atoms, while in this daring manner he charged on horseback at the
head of some 200 skirmishers of the 43rd and 95th mixed together,
and headed them in making a dash at the line of French infantry,
whom we dislodged, I am at a loss to imagine. It was one of those
extraordinary escapes which tend to implant in the mind some faith in
the doctrine of fatality[301].’
[298] The 43rd on the left, the two Caçador battalions in the
centre, the 52nd on the right, while the Rifles were partly
dispersed along the front, partly with the 43rd.
[299] Simmons’s _Journal of a British Rifleman_, p. 77.
[300] Of this, O’Hare’s Company of the 1/95th, sixty-seven
strong, an officer and eleven men were killed or wounded and
forty-five were taken prisoners.
[301] Leach’s _Reminiscences_, pp. 149-50.
The moment that the 52nd were safe, the troops on the knoll evacuated
it, and crossed the bridge behind them at full speed, while the
French reoccupied the wooded eminence. If Ney had been wise he would
have stopped at this moment, and have contented himself with having
driven in the Light Division with a loss of 300 men, while his own
troops had suffered comparatively little. But, carried away by the
excitement of victory, he resolved to storm the bridge, thinking
that the British troops were too much shaken and disordered to make
another stand, even in a strong position. There were plenty of
examples in recent French military history, from Lodi to Ebersberg,
where passages had been forced under difficulties as great.
Accordingly he ordered the 66th, the leading regiment of Loison’s
division, to push on and cross the river. This was a dire mistake:
Craufurd already had the Caçadores in position behind stone walls a
little above the bridge, and Ross’s guns placed across the road so as
to sweep it from end to end. The British battalions were no sooner
across the river than they began to string themselves out behind the
rocks and walls, which lie in a sort of small amphitheatre on the
slope commanding the passage. The bridge, a two-arched structure
seventy yards long, crosses the Coa diagonally, at a point where
it is narrowed down between rocks, and flows very fiercely: it was
flooded at this moment from the rain of the previous night, and
was swelling still, for a tropical storm had just begun and raged
at intervals throughout the afternoon. The cavalry, useless at
the bridge, was sent up-stream to watch some difficult fords near
Alveirenos.
The French 66th, ordered by the Marshal to carry the bridge, formed
its grenadiers on the knoll, to lead the column, and then charged
at the passage. But the leading company was mown down, before it
had got half way across, by a concentrated musketry salvo from the
hillside in front, and the enfilading fire of the guns from the
right. The column broke, and the men recoiled and dispersed among the
rocks and trees by the bank, from whence they opened a fierce but
ineffective fire upon the well-sheltered British battalions. Ney, who
had now lost his temper, ordered up a _bataillon d’élite_ of light
infantry[302] which had distinguished itself at the siege of Ciudad
Rodrigo, and told his aide de camp Sprünglin to take the command and
cross at all costs[303]. There ensued a most gallant effort and a
hideous butchery. The Chasseurs flung themselves at the bridge, and
pushed on till it was absolutely blocked by the bodies of the killed
and the wounded, and till they themselves had been almost literally
exterminated, for out of a battalion of little more than 300 men 90
were killed and 147 wounded in less than ten minutes. A few survivors
actually crossed the bridge, and threw themselves down among the
rocks at its western end, where they took shelter from the British
fire in a little corner of dead ground, but could of course make no
further attempt to advance.
[302] The _Chasseurs de la Siège_ formed of picked marksmen from
all the regiments of the 6th Corps.
[303] That Ney himself was the person responsible for this mad
adventure seems proved by the journal of Sprünglin, who writes ‘À
midi je reçus de M. le Maréchal lui-même l’ordre d’emporter _à
tout prix_ le pont de la Coa, d’où deux compagnies de Grenadiers
venaient d’être repoussés. J’avais 300 hommes; je formai mon
bataillon en colonne et abordai les Anglais à la baïonnette, et
au cri de _Vive l’Empereur_. Le pont fut emporté, mais j’eus
4 officiers et 86 soldats tués, et 3 officiers et 144 soldats
blessés. Le 25 le bataillon, étant détruit, fut dissous.’ That
the bridge was ‘emporté’ in any other sense than that a score or
so of survivors got to the other side, and then returned, is of
course untrue. Sprünglin, p. 439.
Ney, irritated beyond measure, now bade a mounted officer sound
for a ford at a spot above the bridge, where the river spreads
out into a broad reach. But horse and man were killed by a volley
from the British side, and floated down the swollen stream[304].
Finding the river impracticable, the Marshal again ordered the 66th
to go forward: this third attack, delivered without the dash and
determination of the first two, was beaten back with little trouble.
The firing then died down, and during one of the fierce rainstorms
of the late afternoon the few chasseurs who had crossed the bridge
ran back and escaped to their own bank. Craufurd held the position
that he had occupied till midnight, and then retired on Pinhel. He
had lost 333 men only[305], and was fortunate therein, for half his
division might have been destroyed if the officers had shown less
intelligence and the men less pluck. The French had 527 casualties,
four-fifths of them in the mad attempt to force the bridge, in which
the colonel of the 66th and fifteen of his officers had fallen, and
the battalion of Chasseurs had been practically exterminated[306].
Ney forwarded an honest chronicle of the day’s doings to his chief,
which Masséna wrote up, and sent to the Emperor turned into a work of
fancy, in which he declared that he had destroyed 1,200 of Craufurd’s
men (whom he estimated at 2,000 horse and 8,000 infantry, double
their real strength), taken 300 prisoners, a colour, and two guns.
Making no mention of the complete check that Loison’s division had
suffered at the bridge, he stated that ‘the Imperial troops have
shown once again this day that there is no position which can resist
their intrepidity.’ He added foolish gossip, ‘Their Estafete-Mor
(chief Portuguese courier) has been captured with all his dispatches,
in which are several of the 25th and 26th instant, which declare
that the English army is in complete rout, that its deplorable state
cannot be exaggerated, that the English have never been in such a
hot corner, that they have lost sixty officers, of whom they buried
twenty-four on the battlefield, about 400 dead and 700 wounded[307].’
Apparently these ‘dispatches’ are an invention of Masséna’s own. It
is incredible that any British officer can have written such stuff
after a combat of which every man present was particularly proud, and
in which the losses had been incredibly small, considering the risks
that had been run. Four officers, not twenty-four, had been killed,
and one made prisoner. Instead of being in ‘complete rout’ the Light
Division had retired at leisure and unmolested, without leaving even
a wounded man or a single cart behind.
[304] For an interesting description of this incident, see George
Napier’s autobiography, p. 131.
[305] Thirty-six killed, 189 wounded, 83 missing. See Tables in
Appendix.
[306] Martinien’s invaluable lists show 7 officers killed and 17
wounded, which at the normal rate of 22 men per officer, exactly
corresponds to the actual loss of 117 killed and 410 wounded
(Koch, vii. 118).
[307] It is a curious fact that in the draft of Masséna’s
dispatch in the _Archives du Ministère de la Guerre_, we actually
catch him in the act of falsifying returns. There is first
written ‘Nous leur avons pris 100 hommes et deux pièces de canon.
Notre perte a été de près de 500 hommes tant tués que blessés.’
Then the figures 100 are scratched out and above is inserted
‘un drapeau et 400 hommes,’ while for the French loss 500 is
scratched out and 300 inserted. Ney, whose dispatch was lying
before Masséna, had honestly written that Craufurd ‘a été chassé
de sa position avec une perte considérable de tués et de blessés,
nous lui avons fait en outre une centaine de prisonniers.’ Ney
reported also a loss of about 500 men, which Masséna deliberately
cut down to 300. Belmas (iii. 379) has replaced the genuine
figures in his reprint of Masséna’s dispatch, though both the
draft in the _Archives_ and the original publication in the
_Moniteur_ give the falsifications. Masséna says nought of the
check at the bridge, though Ney honestly wrote ‘au delà du Coa,
une réserve qu’il avait lui permis de se reconnaître, et il
continue sa retraite sur Pinhel la nuit du 24.’ As to the guns
captured, it was perfectly true that some cannon were taken that
day, but not in fighting, nor from Craufurd. The governor of
Almeida was mounting two small guns (4-pounders) on a windmill
some way outside the glacis. They had not been got up to their
position, but were lying below--removed from their carriages,
in order to be slung up more easily on to the roof. The mill
was abandoned when Ney came up, and the dismounted cannon fell
into his hands. He said not a word of them, any more than he
did of the imaginary flag alleged by Masséna to have been
captured. But the Prince of Essling brought in both, to please
the imperial palate, which yearned for British flags and guns.
His dispatch, published some weeks later in the _Moniteur_, came
into Craufurd’s hands in November, and provoked him to write a
vindication of his conduct, and a contradiction of ‘the false
assertions contained in Marshal Masséna’s report of an action
which was not only highly honourable to the Light Division,
but positively terminated in its favour, notwithstanding the
extraordinary disparity of numbers. For a corps of 4,000 men
performed, in the face of an army of 24,000, one of the most
difficult operations of war,--a retreat from a broken and
extensive position over one narrow defile, and defended during
the whole day the first defensible position that was to be found
in the neighbourhood of the place where the action commenced.’
For the whole letter see Alex. Craufurd’s _Life of Craufurd_, pp.
140-1.
Wellington was justly displeased with Craufurd for accepting this
wholly unnecessary combat: if the Light Division had been withdrawn
behind the Coa on the 22nd, as he had advised, no danger would have
been incurred, and the bridge might have been defended without
the preliminary retreat to the water’s edge. Yet so great was the
confidence in which Craufurd was held by Wellington, that their
correspondence shows no break of cordiality or tension of relations
during the ensuing days[308], though unofficially the divisional
general was aware that the Commander-in-Chief had disapproved
his action, and felt the blame that was unspoken in the keenest
fashion[309]. There was another British general involved in a serious
degree of culpability on the 24th: this was Picton, who hearing
at his post of Pinhel the firing in the morning, rode up to the
bridge of the Coa; there he met Craufurd, who was just preparing
to resist Ney’s attempt to cross the river. Picton was asked to
bring up the 3rd Division in support, which could have been done
in less than three hours, but roughly refused, saying apparently
that Craufurd might get out of his own scrape. The generals parted
after an exchange of some hard words, and Picton rode back to order
his division to get ready to retreat, having committed one of the
greatest military sins, that of refusing to support a comrade in the
moment of danger, because he did not choose to compromise his own
troops[310].
[308] See the letter to Craufurd in the _Dispatches_, dated
July 26 and 27. His letter to Lord Liverpool of July 25 offers,
indeed, excuses for Craufurd. But in that to Henry Wellesley of
July 27, and still more in that to his relative Pole of July 31,
he expresses vexation. ‘I had positively forbidden the foolish
affairs in which Craufurd involved his outposts, ... and repeated
my injunction that he should not engage in an affair on the right
of the river.... You will say in this case, “Why not accuse
Craufurd?” I answer, “Because if I am to be hanged for it, I
cannot accuse a man who I believe has meant well, and whose error
was one of judgement, not of intention.”’
[309] See _Craufurd’s Life_, pp. 149-50.
[310] This interview was denied by Robinson in his _Life of
Picton_ (i. 294) on the mere allegation of some of Picton’s
staff that they had not heard of it, or been present at it. But
the evidence of William Campbell, Craufurd’s brigade-major,
brought forward by Napier at Robinson’s challenge, is conclusive.
See Napier, vi. pp. 418-19, for the ‘fiery looks and violent
rejoinders’ witnessed by Campbell. Picton had been specially
ordered to support Craufurd if necessary. See _Wellington
Dispatches_, v. pp. 535 and 547.
Having cleared the country-side beyond the Coa by pressing back the
Light Division, and having ascertained by a reconnaissance that
Picton had evacuated Pinhel on the night of the 25th, Masséna was
able to sit down to besiege Almeida at his leisure. The investment
was assigned to Ney and the 6th Corps, while Junot and the 8th
Corps were brought up from the Agueda, and placed in the villages
behind and to the right of the besieged place, so as to be able to
support Ney at a few hours’ notice. The extreme steepness of the
banks of the Coa during its whole course rendered it most unlikely
that Wellington would attempt the relief of Almeida by a direct
advance. He would have had to force a passage, and the Coa, unlike
the Agueda, has very few fords. Its only two bridges, that opposite
Almeida, and that higher up at Castello Bom, were held in force by
the 6th Corps. The siege however might not improbably prove long.
Almeida was in far better repair than Ciudad Rodrigo, and had less
defects. The little town is situated on the culminating knoll of an
undulating plateau, a very slight eminence, but one which was not
commanded by any higher ground as Rodrigo was by the two Tesons.
The outline of the place is almost circular, and exactly fits the
round knoll on which it stands. It has six bastions, with demi-lunes
and a covered way. There is a dry ditch cut in the solid rock, for
Almeida lies on a bare granite plateau, with only two or three feet
of earth covering the hard stratum below. It was well armed with over
100 guns, forty of which were 18-pounders or still heavier. It had
casemates completely proof against bomb fire, and large enough to
cover the whole garrison. This, as has been already said, consisted
of one regular regiment, the 24th of the Line over 1,200 strong, and
the three militia regiments of Arganil, Trancoso, and Vizeu--in all
some 4,000 infantry, with a squadron of the 11th cavalry regiment
and 400 gunners. The governor was William Cox--an English colonel
and a Portuguese brigadier; he had with him five other English
officers, all the rest of the garrison being Portuguese. There was
an ample store both of food and of ammunition, which Wellington
had been pouring in ever since the siege of Ciudad Rodrigo began.
Only two serious defects existed in the place: the first was that
its glacis was too low, and left exposed an unduly large portion of
the walls[311]. The second, a far worse fault, was that the grand
magazine was established in a rather flimsy mediaeval castle in the
centre of the town, and was not nearly so well protected as could
have been desired. Nevertheless Wellington calculated that Almeida
should hold out at least as long as Ciudad Rodrigo, and had some
hope that its siege would detain Masséna so much that the autumn
rains would set in before he had taken the place, in which case the
invasion of Portugal would assume a character of difficulty which it
was far from presenting in August or September.
[311] This came from the extreme hardness of the soil, which
induced the builders of the 18th-century enceinte to put less
earth into the glacis than was needed, since it had to be scraped
up and carried from a great distance, owing to the fact that the
coating of soil all around is so thin above the rock.
For some days after the investment of Almeida had been completed the
6th Corps remained quiescent, and made no attempt to break ground in
front of the place. Ney was waiting for the Grand Park and the train,
which had now started in detachments from Ciudad Rodrigo, but were
advancing very slowly on account of the lack of draught animals. For
a moment Wellington thought it possible that the enemy was about to
mask Almeida, and to advance into Portugal with his main army without
delay[312]. This hypothesis received some support from the facts that
Junot had moved up from the Agueda, and that Reynier had shown the
head of a column beyond the Pass of Perales. This last appeared a
most significant movement; for if the 2nd Corps was about to march
up from the Tagus to join Masséna, the deduction was that it was
required to join in a general invasion, since it was clear that it
was not needed for the mere siege of Almeida. Wellington accordingly
wrote to urge Hill to keep a most vigilant eye on Reynier, and to
be ready to move up to the Mondego the moment that it was certain
that his opponent had passed the Sierra de Gata and linked himself
to the main French army. As a matter of fact there was, as yet, no
danger from Reynier. The advance of one of his flanking detachments
to Navas Frias beyond the Pass of Perales, and a raid made upon
Penamacor on July 31 and upon Monsanto on August 1, by another, were
pure matters of foraging and reconnaissance. Reynier had no orders to
move up his whole force to join Masséna, and was only amusing himself
by demonstrations. His actions became most puzzling to Wellington
when, a few days later, he called back all the troops that had moved
northward, and concentrated his force at Zarza la Mayor, on the road
to Castello Branco, so as to threaten once more to invade Central
Portugal by the line of the Tagus. This was no device of his own, but
the result of a dispatch from Masséna dated July 27, ordering him to
keep more to the south for the present, to threaten Abrantes, and to
afford Hill no chance of joining Wellington.
[312] Wellington to Hill, Alverca, July 27, ‘There is not the
smallest appearance of the enemy’s intending to attack Almeida,
and I conclude that as soon as they have got together their
force, they will make a dash at us, and endeavour to make our
retreat as difficult as possible.’
Reynier’s feints meanwhile had given Hill some trouble; the
appearance of a northward move on the part of his adversary had
caused the British general to make ready for a parallel march on
Fundão and Guarda, so as to connect himself with his chief. He
transferred his head quarters first from Castello Branco to Sarzedas,
and then from Sarzedas to Atalaya, at the foot of the pass that leads
to the Mondego valley, intending to cross the mountains the moment
that Reynier had passed over the Perales defiles with his main body.
But seeing the 2nd Corps unexpectedly turning back and concentrating
at Zarza, Hill also retraced his steps, and lay at Sarzedas again
from August 3rd till September 21st, with his advanced guard at
Castello Branco and his cavalry well out to the front along the
Spanish frontier, watching every movement of the 2nd Corps. During
this time of waiting the Portuguese cavalry of his division had two
small but successful engagements with Reynier’s horse, of whom they
cut up a squadron on the 3rd of August near Penamacor and another
on the 22nd at Ladoeiro, when two officers and sixty men of the
Hanoverian _Chasseurs à Cheval_ were killed or taken[313].
[313] For details of this combat see Foy’s observations on p. 97
of his _Vie Militaire_, ed. Girod de L’Ain.
Wellington’s doubts as to Masséna’s intentions in the first days of
August were provoked not merely by the movements of the 2nd Corps,
but by a demonstration made on an entirely new front by General
Serras, the officer who had been left with an unattached division to
hold the plains of Leon, when Junot and the 8th Corps went off to
join the main army on the Agueda. In obedience to Masséna’s orders,
on July 27 Serras collected at Benavente as much of his division as
could be spared from garrison duty, and moved forward to threaten
the frontier of the Tras-os-Montes, far to the north of Portugal.
He advanced with some 5,000 men as far as Puebla de Senabria, from
which on July 29 he drove out a small Spanish force under General
Taboada--the weak brigade which Echevarria had formerly commanded.
Silveira immediately collected all the Portuguese militia of his
district at Braganza, and prepared to defend the frontier. But
Serras unexpectedly turned back, left a battalion of the 2nd Swiss
Regiment and a squadron of horse in Puebla de Senabria, and returned
to Zamora. The moment that he was gone Silveira and Taboada united
their forces, attacked this small detached force, routed it, and
shut it up in the town on August 4. It was forced to surrender some
six days later, about 20 officers and 350 men, all that remained of
600, being made prisoners. Serras, who had hurried back when he heard
of Silveira’s offensive movement, was too late by twelve hours to
save his men, and found Puebla de Senabria empty, for the allies had
gone off with their prisoners and taken to the mountains. He then
retired to Benavente, and Taboada reoccupied Puebla de Senabria,
where he was not again disturbed. Serras soon after was drawn away
to the north-east by the demands of Bonnet, whose communications
with Santander had once more been cut by Porlier’s roving Asturian
bands. He called on his colleague to attack this partisan force in
the rear, and while Serras was hunting it at Potes and Alba, in the
Cantabrian Hills, Northern Portugal and Galicia were left undisturbed
in September[314].
[314] For a narrative of these obscure campaigns see Schaller’s
_Souvenirs d’un officier Fribourgeois_, pp. 29-37.
While glancing at the subsidiary operations in this remote corner
of Spain, it may be worth while to note, as a proof of the slight
hold which Bonnet and Serras possessed on their allotted districts,
that on June 7 Mahy threatened Astorga, while the Asturian bands
of Colonel Barcena, eluding Bonnet, came down into the plains by
the Pass of Pajares and surprised Leon[315]. They got into the town
by escalade at night, held it for two days, and only evacuated it
when Serras came up in strength on June 9. Provoked at this bold
adventure, Bonnet made his last attempt to conquer Western Asturias,
and so to destroy the indefatigable and evasive partisans in his
front. He forced his way across the Narcea and the Navia, and his
vanguard had reached Castropol, on the Galician border, upon July 5,
when he heard to his disgust that the enemy had slipped behind him.
Barcena was threatening his base at Oviedo, while Porlier’s band,
carried round by English ships, had landed near Llanes and cut the
communication with Santander. These clever moves brought Bonnet back
in haste: he evacuated Western Asturias, called up Serras to his aid,
and was engaged in August and September in the hunt after Porlier
which we have already mentioned[316].
[315] See ibid., pp. 32-3.
[316] For a narrative of these interesting but obscure movements,
see Schepeler, iii. 596-9. It is impossible to give a full
account of them here, but necessary to mention them, to show the
Sisyphean character of Bonnet’s task.
But to return to the main focus of the war in the North. On August
15th Ney’s troops, having at last received the siege-train and a good
supply of munitions from Ciudad Rodrigo and Salamanca, broke ground
in front of Almeida. Wellington was much relieved at the news, as
it was now clear that Masséna was about to besiege the place, and
not to mask it and march forward into Portugal. The front which the
engineers of the 6th Corps had chosen for attack was that facing the
bastion of San Pedro on the south-east front of the town. The first
parallel was drawn at a distance of only 500 yards from the walls;
it was found very difficult to complete, owing to the shallowness
of the earth, and had to be built with gabions and sandbags rather
than to be excavated in the rocky subsoil. In many places outcrops of
stone came to the surface, and had actually to be blasted away by the
sappers, in order to allow of a trench of the shallowest sort being
formed. It was clear that the construction of approaches towards the
town would present the greatest difficulties, since there was little
earth in which to burrow. Between the 17th and the 24th no less than
eleven batteries were constructed along the first parallel. They
were armed with more than fifty heavy guns, for there was artillery
in abundance; in addition to the old siege-train many of the Spanish
guns taken in Ciudad Rodrigo had been brought forward. The Portuguese
kept up a vigorous but not very destructive fire all the time; but on
the 24th they succeeded in preventing the commencement of a second
parallel, driving out the workmen before they could cover themselves
in the stony ground. At six o’clock on the morning of the 26th August
the batteries were all completed and opened fire. Several quarters
of the town were in flames before the afternoon, and the guns on the
three bastions attacked were unable to hold their own against the
converging fire directed on them. But no serious damage had been
done to the defences, and the governor was undismayed. At seven
o’clock in the evening, however, a fearful disaster occurred--one in
its own way unparalleled in magnitude during the whole Peninsular
War. The door of the great magazine in the castle had been opened,
in order to allow of the sending out of a convoy of powder to the
southern ramparts, where the artillery had been hard at work all
day. A leaky barrel was handed out, which left a trail of powder
behind it along the ground; it was being fixed to the saddle of a
pack-ass when a French bomb fell in the courtyard of the castle. In
bursting, the bomb chanced to ignite the train; the spark ran along
it and exploded another barrel at the door of the magazine, which
was still open[317]. This mischance fired the whole store, and
in two seconds the castle, the cathedral at its side, and the whole
central portion of the town had been blasted out of existence. ‘The
earth trembled,’ wrote a French eye-witness, ‘and we saw an immense
whirlwind of fire and smoke rise from the middle of the place. It was
like the bursting of a volcano--one of the things that I can never
forget after twenty-six years. Enormous blocks of stone were hurled
into the trenches, where they killed and wounded some of our men.
Guns of heavy calibre were lifted from the ramparts and hurled down
far outside them. When the smoke cleared off, a great part of Almeida
had disappeared, and the rest was a heap of débris[318].’ Five
hundred of the garrison perished, including nearly every man of the
two hundred artillerymen who were serving the guns on the front of
attack. Some inhabitants were killed, but not many, for the majority
had taken refuge in the casemates when the bombardment began that
morning. It was the unfortunate soldiers who were manning the walls
that suffered.
[317] This version of the cause of the disaster is given
by Soriano da Luz (iii. 73) from the mouth of an artillery
officer (one José Moreira) who had it from the only man in the
castle-yard who escaped. This soldier, seeing the train fired,
jumped into an oven-hole which lay behind him, and chanced not to
be killed.
[318] Sprünglin’s _Journal_, pp. 444-5.
[Illustration: COMBAT OF THE COA. JULY 24TH, 1810.]
Fearing that the French might seize the moment for an escalade,
General Cox ran to the ramparts and, assisted by a Portuguese
artillery officer, loaded and fired into the trenches some of the few
guns on the south front which were not disabled. He turned out the
whole garrison, and kept them under arms that night, lying behind
the walls in expectation of an assault which never came. The morning
light enabled him to realize the full extent of the disaster; the
bastions and curtains had suffered little, the shell, so to speak,
of the town was still intact, and the casemates had stood firm, but
everything within the enceinte was wrecked. Only five houses in
the place had kept their roofs: the castle was a deep hole, like
the crater of a volcano: the streets were absolutely blocked with
ruins, so that there was no going from place to place save along the
ramparts.
There were still 4,000 men under arms; but the officer commanding
the artillery reported that thirty-nine barrels of powder, and a few
hundred rounds in the small expense-magazines on the ramparts, were
all that had escaped the explosion. That is to say, there was not
powder in the place to keep up a reply for one day to the batteries
of the besieger. The infantry had 600,000 cartridges in their
regimental stores (150 rounds per man) but that was of no use for
the heavy guns. Moreover, more than half the gunners had perished in
the disaster of the previous night--only 200 were left to man nearly
100 guns that were still serviceable. It was clear that Almeida was
doomed, since it could not defend itself without powder: but there
was a chance that Wellington, whose outposts must have heard and
seen the explosion, might think it worth while to dash forward and
endeavour to save the garrison during the next twenty-four hours.
Therefore Cox resolved to protract his resistance as long as was
possible, to give his chief the option of fighting if he should so
please. But the defence could not be prolonged for more than a day or
two at the most.
At nine on the morning of the 27th Masséna sent in his aide de
camp Pelet to demand the surrender of the fortress. Cox had him
blindfolded, and taken into a casemate for their interview, so that
he might not be able to judge of the awful effects of the explosion.
The usual haggling followed--the French officer threatened that
the place should be escaladed at once, and the garrison put to the
sword. The governor replied that his walls were intact, that he
could still defend himself, and that the ‘deplorable accident’ had
not appreciably diminished his resisting power[319]. But he finally
consented to send out an officer to the French camp to negotiate for
terms. All this was merely done to gain time, and the semaphore on
the western ramparts was signalling desperate messages to Wellington
all the morning.
[319] There is a good account of this interview in Sprünglin’s
_Journal_, p. 445, the diarist having accompanied Pelet into the
town.