THE CLOSE OF THE PENINSULAR WAR.
Any one who has read a great number of letters from the Peninsula
must often have been struck by the marked difference between those
written by young officers and those by their seniors. The older
men were often despondent in times of hardship, and were generally
critical of the actions of those in command; while the subalterns
and younger captains seem to have been ever in high spirits, and
bubbling over with youth and gaiety. There is no doubt that, as far
as regimental officers were concerned, this matter of youth put
an immense amount of dash into all the operations undertaken, and
inspired the soldiers with courage as well as with confidence. And it
is not too much to say that an army officered by a preponderance of
middle-aged men would have taken twice as long to rid northern Spain
of the French. The human factor in warfare is usually overlooked by
the casual reader of military history; he knows the characteristics
of the chief commanders in a campaign; he knows such well-worn
theories as Napoleon's presence on a battlefield being equivalent to
forty thousand men; but otherwise he regards battalions as composed
of officers and men all turned out of the same mould--of like
temperament, of like age, and of like physique.
Now, if a study were made of the average ages of British regimental
officers in the several campaigns of the hundred years ending 1908,
it would probably be found that they varied very considerably, and
it might be interesting to discover whether the ages of the officers
affected the "go" of the campaign one way or the other. But, as
concerns the Peninsular army, it is an undoubted fact that regimental
officers were far younger than they have ever been since. As a rule,
an officer was a captain within six years of joining his regiment,
and, unless unfortunate, a major within another six years, while,
with any luck, he obtained the command of his regiment before he
was much over thirty years of age. Napier gives many instances:
Lieut.-Colonel Charles Macleod, who was killed at the head of the
43rd in the breach at Badajoz, had not reached his 27th year;
Lieut.-Colonel Thomas Lloyd fell leading the 94th at the battle of
Nivelle, at the age of thirty; Sir William Napier himself was only
twenty-nine when he finished his last campaign, and his brother, Sir
George, was but a year older at the close of the Peninsular War;
Sir John Colborne (Lord Seaton) considered himself a most unlucky
man in not having obtained the command of a regiment until he was
thirty-two; and many other cases might be cited of the youth of
the senior officers of regiments. These were the men who led their
battalions to victory after victory, and their subordinates were
for the most part mere boys. Many fought through the Peninsular War
while still in their teens, and Colborne affirmed that, when he was
commanding the 66th, he was the only officer of the regiment over
twenty-five years of age. We know that young Mainwaring, of the 51st,
aged fourteen, was leading the veterans of the regiment at Fuentes
d'Onor, and we have his own word for it, that when he entered Madrid
with the victorious army he was so young that the gaieties of the
city failed to amuse him, and that he preferred to spend his evenings
quietly with the old Spanish couple upon whom he was billeted. And
most regiments, doubtless, had ensigns as young as Mainwaring.
We of to-day naturally question the value of such youthful
officers--lads who nowadays would be in the ranks of their school
cadet corps. Yet it is an extraordinary fact that these boys
commanded men often old enough to be their fathers, and were followed
by them with the greatest devotion. Sir William Napier writes of
one of his subalterns, Edward Freer, killed at the battle of the
Nivelle, that, though only a lieutenant, he "was rich in honour, for
he bore many scars and was young of days. He was only nineteen, but
had seen more combats and sieges than he could count years. Slight in
person, and of such surpassing and delicate beauty that the Spaniards
often thought him a girl disguised in man's clothing, he was yet so
vigorous, so active, so brave, that the most daring and experienced
veterans watched his looks on the field of battle, and would obey his
slightest sign in the most difficult situations.... He was pierced
with three balls at the first storming of the Rhune rocks, and the
sternest soldiers in the regiment wept even in the middle of the
fight when they heard of his fate."
There is no shadow of doubt that, young as they were, the regimental
officers of this period, taken as a whole, knew their business
thoroughly; that is to say, the commanding officer could handle his
regiment with skill, and the captains and subalterns were expert
company officers both in the field and in quarters. The majority
of them possessed initiative, and in the fight seldom made a
mistake or missed an opportunity. Their school was war, and in that
rough-and-ready school they picked up all that they knew, for few
of them, except those who had been trained under Sir John Moore at
Shorncliffe, had learned anything of soldiering before they landed
in the Peninsula. Even the most hypercritical of modern writers must
admit that the officer of a hundred years ago performed the duties
of the rank for which he drew pay well and truly and to the best
of his ability. And what more, it may be asked, can be expected of
any one? Certainly the State had no cause for complaint that it
was not getting good value for its money, for it paid its infantry
captains no more than ten shillings and sixpence a-day, and its
ensigns half that sum, for doing their duty nobly, for undermining
their constitutions through exposure, privation, and hardships, and
for risking their lives for days, weeks, months, and years on end.
They were practical, fighting soldiers; but there have arisen modern
critics who say of them that their minds were small and undeveloped,
because they were not students of the military art, because they
had not read military history and therefore did not realise that
history is always repeating itself, and because such things as
strategy and grand tactics were outside their sphere of thought. We
do not deny that if these officers were aiming at something higher
than regimental soldiering, there is a measure of sense in these
criticisms; but we would point out that, except in the case of one
or two senior officers in each regiment, there had been no time for
the study of books; for if we accept the statement that captains and
subalterns were under twenty-five years of age at the close of the
Peninsular War, and that most of them had been on active service
practically from the day they joined, we fail to see when they could
have read military history. And, even if they had had leisure to read
such works on military history as were available a hundred years ago,
there is no reason to suppose that their duties, as simple regimental
officers, would have been performed the better. Afterwards many of
them went to High Wycombe (Staff College) to continue their study of
the art of war, the practical part of which they had already learned,
and it was not found that their experience of war had in any way
impaired their reasoning powers.
But in the Peninsula, youth and ignorance of military history do
not appear to have interfered with successful leading, and he who
delights to read of gallant deeds will find, in the accounts of
the various fights, scores of episodes in which boy officers set
brilliant examples to their men, and by their valour at a critical
moment often saved the day. Such were the leaders of Forlorn Hopes
and of similar desperate enterprises, and it would seem as if these
lads must have matured much more rapidly than do the boys of the
present age. Yet it may be that the rank and file were so magnificent
that, at ordinary times, they were capable of being driven with a
silken thread. That the soldiers, in spite of Wellington's dictum as
to their being "the scum of the earth," were magnificent, is certain,
and it is equally certain that they were devoted to their officers.
There is scarcely a regiment in the army whose history does not
record some gallant act performed by a soldier to save the life of
an officer; and these rugged veterans went out of their way to show
kindness to the boy subalterns in times of sickness or of hardship.
It may be thought that, with older officers, the frequent outbreaks
of indiscipline which sullied the good name of Wellington's soldiers
might have been avoided. But who can say whether the great captain
would have benefited in the long-run? Occasionally his operations
were delayed by the marauding and drunkenness of his troops, but
there is no proof that his plans ever broke down owing to the youth
of his regimental officers, and he never appears to have complained
that they were too young, though he may have hinted that a few of
his generals were too old, for some of them were ten years older
than himself.[74] But it may seem extraordinary that officers of the
army as a whole should have been so young towards the end of the
Peninsular War, for one has always imagined that, under the Purchase
System, promotion was remarkably slow. Still, the wastage produced by
the long war was enormous; deaths, wounds, and disease ploughed deep
into the commissioned ranks; and to keep up the supply of officers
was no easy matter. Officers, captains as well as subalterns, were
transferred from the militia to the regular army;[75] from time
to time non-commissioned officers were promoted ensigns, for good
service in the field; but the majority of commissions were given
to cadets of the Royal Military College,[76] at the average age of
fifteen, or to boys, equally young, appointed direct to regiments.
The loss of twelve officers and seventy-two men (killed or wounded),
in the fighting of the 31st August, reduced the strength of the 51st
woefully, and it was one of the regiments which could least afford
such a depletion, since it was in the unfortunate situation of
having no second battalion in England upon which to fall back for
reinforcements of officers and men. Most regiments in the field had
a second battalion at home, ready to make good the casualties in the
foreign battalion as they occurred, but the fate of the 51st had been
against its ever having been able to recruit a second battalion. The
68th, also, with which the 51st had been brigaded for the greater
part of the war, was suffering from the same cause, and so reduced in
numbers were the two regiments that it became a great question what
to do with them. The regiments themselves were for linking up and
forming themselves into what was termed a "provisional battalion,"
and Wellington agreed to the proposal; but the authorities at home,
refusing to sanction anything of the kind, informed Wellington that,
if he deemed it necessary, he could send the regiments home to
recruit up to strength. But the Commander-in-Chief had no intention
of parting with any of his tried soldiers, and he preferred weak
battalions of veterans to full ones of recruits, so the 51st and 68th
remained with Inglis's brigade of the 7th Division, to fight the war
to a finish.
After the fall of San Sebastian, the 51st recrossed to the right bank
of the Bidassoa and occupied its former position near Santa Barbara,
facing Vera. Here it remained throughout the month of September,
and early in October moved to Echallar, to await the development of
Wellington's plans. Major Rice, who had been kept in England after
the expiration of his sick leave, because the authorities thought
that Wellington would send the regiment home, now rejoined, in the
best of health and spirits, though disappointed at having missed the
three months' fighting in which his regiment had taken part. He saw,
however, that he was still in time to take his share of plenty of
rough work; and so it proved.
Wellington, having driven the French out of northern Spain into
the Pyrenees, at first had no intention of following them into
France, his reasons being that Napoleon might at any moment send
reinforcements to Soult, and that a French army (under Suchet) was
still in possession of the Mediterranean province of Catalonia, in
eastern Spain. With Suchet in his rear, his position was insecure;
and if large reinforcements were despatched to Soult, the allied army
might fare badly, although the proximity of the sea-base rendered
disaster impossible. When, therefore, San Sebastian fell, Wellington
inclined to transfer the war to Catalonia, but political pressure
from home and the news of Napoleon's misfortunes in Germany combined
to cause him to change his plans, when, as Napier says, he "matured
an offensive movement as daring as any undertaken during the whole
war"--in short, an assault on Soult's whole line of fortifications in
the Pyrenees, and the invasion of France.
Between the opposing armies the Bidassoa flowed from Vera to the sea;
but to the north and north-east of Vera there was no such well-marked
dividing line--only the labyrinth of rocky spurs and ravines which
seamed the mountain-slopes. Wellington's plan was to advance
simultaneously on the right and on the left, the troops on the right
storming Soult's fortified posts among the mountains, while those on
the left forced the passage of the Lower Bidassoa. These operations
were to have commenced ill the middle of September, but, owing to
faulty arrangements in the matter of pontoons and subsequently to
bad weather, they were deferred until the 6th October. That night
everything was got ready, and at daybreak next morning Wellington's
carefully laid plans were set going, their extraordinary boldness
altogether deceiving Soult.
Under the protection of a heavy cannonade from San Marcial and the
neighbourhood, the divisions on the left forded the Lower Bidassoa
at several points almost before the French had fired a shot, and,
turning the enemy out of his positions, crossed the frontier into
France. At the same time, the Light Division advancing on Vera,
and thence up the mountain-slopes, carried position after position
with astounding impetuosity; while, farther away on the right,
the 7th Division and others guarded the Echallar pass and various
roads and tracks through the mountains. Desultory fighting went on
upon the crests of the Pyrenees during the next two days, after
which Wellington called a halt, and from his headquarters at Vera
reorganised the commands of his army. Hill was given the right, from
Roncesvalles to the Bastan; Beresford the centre, which included
Echallar, where the 7th Division was posted; and Hope the left, from
the Mandale mountain to the sea. Tents were brought up, and the
troops encamped on their several positions, eagerly awaiting the
order to move forward; but Wellington had not yet decided finally
whether to invade France or to move back into Spain and carry the
war into Catalonia. A month was thus spent, in the most inclement
weather, on the summits of the bleak Pyrenees, and the allied army
suffered great hardships, some of the posts being at times snowed
up and cut off from provisions. Fortunately they were provided with
tents--though they were a cold comfort; nevertheless, the shelter
which they afforded was certainly preferable to bivouacs among the
rocks.
Prior to the opening of the campaign of 1813, regiments had been
unacquainted with the luxury of canvas, and it is wonderful how they
managed to exist for so many years in such variations of climate.
Whenever possible, the troops were billeted in the towns, villages,
and farms; but when actually in the field the bivouac was resorted
to, and as time went on the old soldiers became adepts at making
themselves comfortable, in shelters formed of boughs of trees, or
even in hastily constructed huts, when halting in the more wooded
parts of the country. In 1812, tents were improvised out of blankets,
two of which were fastened together by tapes sewn on to the sides,
and then stretched over a pole supported by the arm piles; but these
provided shelter for only four men, who, moreover, had but two
blankets among them in which to sleep. The whole matter was one of
transport, and Wellington had always refused to allow the movements
of his army to be hampered by excessive baggage. By this time,
however, the medical officers had learnt by experience that much
of the sickness of the army was attributable to exposure, and the
authorities at length sanctioned the issue of four tents per company,
three for the men and one for the officers, but their carriage was
not to entail any increase in the number of transport animals.
Hitherto the company mules carried nothing except the heavy iron
camp-kettles, or cauldrons, but now these were exchanged for lighter
ones of tin, which the men (six to a kettle) took it in turn to carry
on their knapsacks, while the mules carried the tents.
Meanwhile, Soult had taken advantage of the inaction of his foe,
and had caused to be thrown up a complete chain of entrenchments,
some thirty miles long, covering St Jean de Luz on his right, and
extending along the course of the Nivelle to its upper waters, whence
the left of his line stretched eastward to the river Nive. The centre
was guarded by outworks, erected about the Smaller Rhune and Sarre,
to the east of the Greater Rhune; and so strong was this vast line
that the most careful reconnaissances could discover scarcely a
single weak spot in it.
At length Wellington made up his mind to move on into France, for he
had now learned that Suchet would not co-operate with Soult, and he
had learned also that Napoleon had met with successes in Germany. The
time, therefore, was opportune to attack Soult, and to delay might
result in his opponent receiving reinforcements from Napoleon. The
British commander arrived at this decision early in November, and
on the 9th issued his orders. His plan was to strike at the French
centre, cross the Nivelle at the bridge of Amotz, and attempt to
divide Soult's force. Before any general advance could be made,
however, it was necessary to clear the foreground by capturing the
outworks in the Pyrenees, and the Light Division, still in position
about the Greater Rhune, facing the strongly fortified Smaller Rhune,
not a mile distant, was ordered to push forward on the morrow.
This the regiments of the famous division did in the most gallant
manner, thus opening what was known as the battle of the Nivelle, and
sweeping the Frenchmen from their fortified posts at the point of the
bayonet.
The strength of the enemy's right determined Wellington to make
no immediate advance on that side, but to bring round Hill's and
Beresford's divisions in a species of gigantic wheel, so as to cross
the Nivelle above and below the bridge of Amotz, and cut Soult's
army in two. While, therefore, the Light Division was fighting its
way through the enemy's advanced works, the 4th and 7th Divisions
were sent against the forts of San Barbe and Grenada. It was a day
of grand work, but we can do no more than follow the fortunes of the
51st, in Inglis's brigade of the 7th Division.
By a stroke of luck for Major Sam Rice, Colonel Mitchell had
been placed on the sick list at Echallar, and the command of
the regiment devolved on the major, who soon showed that he was
equal to the responsibility. From the mouth of the Echallar
pass, the 7th Division advanced rapidly on the Grenada fort,
which covered the village of Sarre, while the 4th Division moved
against the neighbouring fort of San Barbe, the regiments carrying
scaling-ladders, wherewith, if necessary, to storm the works. Such
aids, however, were not needed, for the defenders, powerless to
withstand the fire of the eighteen British guns which accompanied
the attack, fled from the forts, and though they stood for a
while at Sarre, they soon broke before the determined onslaught
of the pursuers. The victorious divisions, as they forged ahead,
presently found themselves confronted by two redoubts, Louis XIV.
and Harastaguia. The former was immediately stormed and carried at
the point of the bayonet, and attention was then paid to the latter,
in front of which the 31st French Regiment had been placed as a
covering force. Upon this unfortunate regiment the 7th Division fell
forthwith, breaking it and putting it to the rout, and driving the
garrison from the redoubt--even to the banks of the Nivelle.
The French, pursued vigorously by the 4th and 7th Divisions,
crossed the river by the various bridges, and took up positions on
the heights above St Pé, whereupon Wellington, halting the other
divisions, pushed the 3rd and the 7th across the river against
Maransin's French division, which stood its ground and fought
desperately. "After a hard struggle, in which General Inglis
was wounded, and the 51st and 68th Regiments were handled very
roughly,"[77] the attack succeeded, and Maransin's troops were put to
flight. Thus, at nightfall, when darkness put an end to the fight,
the British had established themselves in rear of the French right,
and Wellington had reason to be proud of the valour of his troops.
In his despatch he included the following: "I likewise particularly
observed the gallant conduct of the 51st and 68th Regiments under
command of Major Rice and Lieut.-Colonel Hawkins, in Major-General
Inglis's brigade, in the attack of the heights above St Pé, in the
afternoon of the 10th." On this day the 51st lost two officers and
twenty-two men killed, two officers and seventy-three men wounded,
and one officer (Captain Phelps) taken prisoner. "Major Rice," says
the 'Records of the 51st Regiment,' "commanding the regiment on this
occasion in the absence of Colonel Mitchell, detained at Echallar by
sickness, was rewarded for his bravery by a lieutenant-colonelcy and
the Gold Medal."
The Peninsular Gold Medal was a much-coveted decoration, for it
was given sparingly, and only to selected officers, for certain
engagements. No officer could claim the right to receive it, but
as the war progressed regulations were issued from time to time,
and recommendations for the decoration were restricted to certain
ranks for the satisfactory performance of certain duties. It must be
remembered that, at the commencement of the Peninsular War, medals
were almost unknown in the British army. A few had been struck
to commemorate great naval victories, but they were bestowed at
first only on the chief commanders, though towards the close of the
eighteenth century a wider distribution was made to the navy and
marines. Soldiers, however, knew nothing of medals, and even Sir John
Moore, with all his war service, died without ever having received
a medal.[78] The suggestion of granting medals to officers engaged
in the war in the Peninsula probably came from Sir Arthur Wellesley,
who had recently come from India, where the Honourable East India
Company was accustomed to issue medals to all its native troops for
the various Indian wars. Gold medals in two sizes were therefore
struck and granted to senior officers, the larger medals being given
to generals and the smaller to other officers, as a rule not below
the rank of major. On one side of the medal was the name of the
action for which it was granted, and on the principle of _bis dat qui
cito dat_, the medals were distributed as soon as possible after the
action, being sent out for the purpose to the seat of war.
As time went on senior officers began to accumulate many medals,
since they received one for each great battle or siege; and the
authorities deemed it advisable to issue no more than one medal to an
officer, engraving upon it subsequently the names of all the general
actions at which he was present. Presently a fresh difficulty
arose: the actions became too numerous to admit of their names being
engraved on the limited space of the medal; so, eventually, in
1813, regulations concerning the issue of gold medals were finally
approved. It was then laid down that an officer should wear only
one gold medal, upon which should be engraved the first action in
which he was engaged; that for the second and third action he should
receive gold clasps, inscribed with the names of the actions. The
fourth action entitled the officer to the Gold Cross, upon which were
engraved all four actions, and which was to be worn in substitution
of the gold medal and clasps previously received; and gold clasps
were added to the ribbon of the gold cross for each subsequent action
after the original four.
As far as regimental officers were concerned, the commanding officer
of a full battalion present in an action for which a commemorative
medal was struck[79] was usually recommended for the smaller gold
medal (or clasp if he was already in possession of the medal), even
though he might have been a major temporarily in command. As a
rule, no other regimental officer received the medal for services
performed as such, but occasionally a major or a captain was given
the decoration for some particularly brilliant service, for which
nowadays he would be awarded the V.C. or the D.S.O. But anything like
a general distribution of medals to every one engaged was not given
a thought; in fact the idea of wearing medals at all was so new that
the majority of officers and men of the army regarded such things
as far beyond their reach; and it was not until after the issue of
a silver medal to all ranks of the army present at Waterloo, that
Peninsular veterans began to consider themselves slighted. Yet for
upwards of thirty years they agitated in vain, and only in 1848 was
justice done to them by the issue of a silver medal, with clasps.
Probably, by that time, the greater number of these brave men had
passed away, for, between 1808 and 1848, thousands had been killed in
action, died of wounds or of disease contracted on active service,
died in afterlife from the effects of exposure and hardships during
long years of campaigning, or died of old age.
The regimental officers, perhaps, felt the non-recognition of their
services more than did the men, for they argued that they had shared
in many Peninsular victories as hard-fought as Waterloo, and had
nothing to show for them except the scars on their bodies. And
they felt the injustice the more when they remembered the manner
in which the gold medal had been awarded. Almost every officer on
the staff--even the most junior in field rank--had received it
as a matter of course; but no such generosity had been extended
to regimental officers, few of whom had been able to fulfil the
qualifications prescribed by the authorities. There were captains
and subalterns who had fought in battles and sieges innumerable,
often severely wounded and even maimed for life, yet who went
undecorated; while there were majors, perhaps but once engaged, who,
by a stroke of fortune, brought their regiments out of action, and
thereby qualified for recommendation for the gold medal. Major Sam
Rice, however, was not one of these, for he had seen as much service
as any officer of the 51st. Still, but for the temporary illness
of his commanding officer, his Peninsular services would have gone
unrewarded.
After the battle of the Nivelle, Soult withdrew his main body to the
entrenched camp at Bayonne. He destroyed the bridge at Ustaritz,
and disposed his troops along the right bank of the river Nive, so
as to watch all the other crossings. The weather favoured him; for,
throughout the next eight days, rain fell incessantly, the river
came down in flood, and the roads, knee-deep in mud and slush, were
practically impassable, so that Wellington was restrained from
following up his victory. Further circumstances, moreover, forced
delay upon him: the Spanish troops, elated at the invasion of France,
murdered and pillaged the unfortunate inhabitants far and wide, and
so incensed was Wellington at their conduct that he forthwith put to
death all whom he took red-handed, and sent the Spanish divisions,
composed of some 25,000 men, back across the frontier, to their own
country, although by so doing he foresaw the possibility of serious
trouble with the Spanish Government.
Wellington now felt his way cautiously, his available troops being
too few to run any great risks, and he would not have moved forward
immediately except for the fact that the enemy still had a footing at
one point on the left bank of the Nive. This was at the Cambo bridge,
which, covered by a bridge-head on the left bank, was a source of
grave concern to the British commander, since its possession could
be taken advantage of by Soult to launch an attack on Wellington's
right flank. On the 16th November, therefore, Hill was ordered
to move out and threaten the bridge-head, an operation which was
completely successful, as the enemy made no stand, but, blowing up
the bridge-head and the bridge, evacuated the left bank of the river
at the first sight of Hill's reconnaissance. With the Nive between
his right flank and the French, Wellington knew that he could bide
his time, and complete his preparations for a further advance. And it
was nearly a month before he pushed on again.
Between the 8th and 13th December the fighting was heavy and almost
continuous, but the 51st saw little of it, being moved about from
point to point, in reserve, and being brought up at the concluding
action at St Pierre only when the day had been won. But in these
stoutly contested battles before Bayonne, otherwise known as the
"Battles of the Nive," the Anglo-Portuguese force had met with great
successes, had crossed that river, and had pushed the enemy back
upon Bayonne, thus earning the well-merited praise of its commander,
who himself averred that, had he gone against his conscience and
brought up the 25,000 disgraced Spaniards, he would have carried
Bayonne and driven Soult's army to the winds. As it was, he held the
line which he had gained until he opened the campaign of 1814, and
commenced the final phase of the long war.
At the time Wellington had the unpleasant feeling that the Spanish
Government, smarting under the insult which had been offered to
the national army, would join the French, and force the British
commander to fight for the embarkation of his army. Within the next
few weeks, however, the political situation cleared up, and Soult
began to suffer from the calls made upon him by Napoleon to supply
reinforcements for the army with which he was endeavouring to stem
the tide of German invasion on the eastern frontiers of France. Soult
still held the fortress of Bayonne, standing at the confluence of the
Nive with the Adour, and up-stream from Bayonne he held the right
bank of the Adour as far as the mouth of the river Bidouse, whence
his line, bending southwards almost at right angles, followed the
right bank of the latter river. Wellington's immediate objective was
Bayonne, the investment of which place he had determined to effect
at once, and for this purpose it was necessary to throw a portion of
his army across the Adour. With the sea at his command, he decided
to cross the river below Bayonne, and in order to distract Soult's
attention from that direction he threatened the French centre and
left, about the upper Adour and Bidouse, with all the troops whom he
could spare.
Towards the middle of February (1814) the operations commenced. On
the 26th, Hope, with magnificent skill, threw a bridge of boats
across the Adour, at the point some three hundred yards wide, and
completed the investment of Bayonne forthwith. Meanwhile Soult's
troops had been kept fully occupied among the rivers and streams
to the eastward, and on the 27th was fought the battle of Orthes.
The 51st, which, with the 7th Division (forming part of Beresford's
command), had been pushing the French north-eastward from the river
Bidouse during the previous week, found itself on the morning of the
27th near St Boes, opposite the enemy's right. Soult had taken up a
strong position along the heights extending from St Boes to the Gave
de Pau about the village of Orthes, and had made up his mind to give
battle. Wellington was ready to meet him. Beresford, with the 4th and
7th Divisions, was ordered to attack the right from the north-west;
Hill, with the 2nd Division, moving from the south bank of the Gave
de Pau, was directed to advance on the bridge of Orthes and turn the
French left; while Picton, with the 3rd and 6th Divisions, and Alten,
with the Light Division, held the centre.
The battle was opened by Beresford at about 9 A.M., but, although he
pushed in the enemy's right and carried the village of St Boes, he
was in turn forced to retire, and was roughly handled by the French
guns. Picton, who had at the same time been pressing forward against
the centre, met with no better success, and was also driven back.
For the moment the situation was critical, and it seemed as if Soult
would snatch a victory; but Wellington's master-mind realised what
was happening, and, quick as thought, he hurled a counter-attack of
Alten's and Picton's men in between two parts of the French army
which had become separated. Beresford turned, recaptured St Boes, and
cut off Soult's retreat by the Dax road; and at the same time Hill
forded the Gave de Pau a little above Orthes, and menaced Soult's
left. The French, smitten in front and flank, drew off rapidly to the
north-east, and the battle resolved itself into a race between Hill's
Division and Soult's army for the bridge at Sault de Navailles, three
miles away. The retreat was well carried out, and though Hill's
cavalry pursued with a certain amount of success, Soult contrived to
pass the bridge and destroy it, thus putting an end to the pursuit.
This was the last general action of the Peninsular War in which
the 51st was engaged, for although the regiment crossed the Adour
at St Sever, and advanced as far as Mont de Marsan, it was then
detached, in order to accompany Beresford to Bordeaux, which city was
wavering between allegiance to Napoleon or to the Bourbons. To settle
matters, and to give confidence to the Bourbon party, Wellington
sent Beresford with twelve thousand men, and the appearance of this
force before Bordeaux, on the 12th March, had the desired result;
whereupon Beresford, leaving Lord Dalhousie with the 7th Division and
three squadrons of cavalry to occupy the place, marched back to the
army. But as soon as Beresford had departed, the Napoleonists took
heart and attempted an insurrection, in which they were supported by
the advance of a French force from outside. For the next few weeks,
therefore, the 51st was constantly engaged in skirmishes with the
enemy, who was eventually dispersed by the arrival of a British fleet
in the Garonne.
While these events were passing in the neighbourhood of Bordeaux,
Wellington was following Soult. On the 20th March, a short but
fierce fight at Tarbes resulted in the defeat of the French, who,
however, retiring towards Toulouse, continued to dispute the advance
of the Allies towards the upper Garonne, until, on the 10th April,
Wellington caught them at Toulouse, and overthrew them. With this
victory the war was brought to a close, for, the day after Wellington
entered the town, the news of Napoleon's abdication was received from
Paris, and the preliminaries for a permanent peace were entered into.
At Bordeaux the 51st remained in the enjoyment of a good deal of
pleasure and gaiety until July, when it embarked for England, and
proceeded first to Plymouth and then to Portsmouth, from which latter
place it had started three years and a half before for the Peninsula.
In that time the regiment had lost many officers and a great number
of men, but these gallant dead had helped to gain seven fresh
battle honours for the colours of the 51st. Personal rewards were
restricted to the three senior officers, each of whom received the
Gold Medal and brevet promotion, otherwise the officers and men found
their reward only in the knowledge that they had fought for the glory
of England, and had upheld the good name of their regiment. Napier,
in the concluding paragraph of his 'Battles and Sieges,' writes of
the Peninsular army as follows:--
"Thus the war terminated, and with it all remembrance of the
veterans' services. Yet those veterans had won nineteen pitched
battles and innumerable combats; had made or sustained ten sieges,
and taken four great fortresses; had twice expelled the French
from Portugal, once from Spain; had penetrated France, and killed,
wounded, or captured two hundred thousand enemies--leaving of their
own number forty thousand dead, whose bones whiten the plains and
mountains of the Peninsula."
But, if one turns to the lighter side of the war, one gathers from
the journals and letters of officers that, in all this campaigning,
with its attendant bloodshed and misery, there was usually some
bright lining to the cloud. The vast majority of the officers, as
has been shown, were of an age particularly susceptible to sparkling
eyes and suchlike things, and the Spanish and French ladies appear to
have been no less susceptible to the charming manners of the brave
young Englishmen--even though the latter loved and rode away. There
were not a few instances, however, of attachments which ended in
marriage, and some of the non-commissioned officers and men also
brought home Spanish or French wives. These men of war certainly
carried large hearts buttoned within their tight-fitting coatees, and
the cordiality of the _entente_ was beyond dispute, as is evident
from the following words with which one of Napier's subalterns
concludes his account of the war[80]--words which, when compared with
the above-quoted paragraph, show with what different eyes a bachelor
lieutenant and a married lieutenant-colonel looked on life:--
"But at the conclusion of the war there was such an abundance of
kissing as probably the like of it was never seen before, which put
one in mind of the adage, 'that none but the brave deserve the fair.'
There was kissing in the valleys, and kissing upon the hills, and,
in short, there was embracing, kissing, and counter-kissing from
Toulouse to Bordeaux."