The First Battles of the Peninsular War
(1808)
“_In war _men_ are nothing: it is a _man_ who is everything._”
NAPOLEON.
On his return from Copenhagen, Wellesley, never happy unless his mind
was fully occupied, resumed his duties as Chief Secretary for Ireland.
Special mention of the services he had rendered to his country was made
in the House of Commons, and there was some talk of a second period in
India, where affairs were far from settled. Before long, however, it
became increasingly evident that his knowledge and ability would be
required nearer home.
[Illustration: WELLINGTON’S PENINSULAR CAMPAIGNS.]
Portugal, our old ally, had been forced by Napoleon to declare war
against Great Britain on the 20th October 1807. Bent on pursuing
the rigid restrictions on trade imposed by his Continental System,
he had also peremptorily ordered the confiscation of the property
of the British merchants. Fortunately for those most concerned, the
Prince Regent remembered past friendship and may have discerned future
possibilities. He temporized, and this enabled many of the English
residents to settle their affairs and sail for home before the Dictator
could enforce obedience. The sequel was the overrunning of the
kingdom by French troops under the intrepid Junot, who met with no
resistance, and the desertion of their subjects by the Royal Family,
who sailed for Brazil.
Although this plan was carried out at the earnest request of the
British Government, as represented by Lord Strangford, the Ambassador
at the Portuguese Capital, it cannot be regarded as a pleasing example
of patriotism on the part of the House of Braganza.
In October 1807, Junot, in command of the French Army, and strengthened
by a few regiments of the Spanish corps placed at Napoleon’s disposal
for the dismemberment of the western portion of the Iberian Peninsula,
began his march on Lisbon. He concluded it on the 30th November with
only 1500 troops, the remainder following slowly by reason of the
terrible sufferings they had endured during a forced march made at
Napoleon’s urgent behest.
Here it should be mentioned that the presence of the Spanish troops
was due to the infamous Treaty of Fontainebleau, signed the previous
October. In this arrangement the Emperor had promised Godoy, the
real ruler of Spain and an intensely ambitious man, a large slice of
territory in the country about to be conquered in return for favours
rendered. It is more than probable that Napoleon never intended this
particular clause to be taken seriously by anyone but his dupe; the
gift was so much dust thrown in the eyes of the favourite for the
purpose of securing the entry of French troops into Spain.[35] In this
he was pre-eminently successful. Once in Lisbon Junot speedily removed
any fear of the national army by breaking up many of the regiments and
sending the remainder on service outside the kingdom. The flames of
rebellion were not yet kindled. So far so good.
Unhappily the chief prizes which the Emperor had hoped to secure at
Lisbon were beyond his reach. Even the squadron which was to have
seized the Portuguese and British shipping in the harbour was held in
check by the hated English.
Napoleon, pretending to be the friend of Spain, was in reality her
worst enemy. He merely used her as a useful tool to pick Portuguese
locks, and then pursued the same course with his friend’s lockers.
He began his unwelcome attentions by seizing the important frontier
fortresses of Pampeluna, Barcelona, San Sebastian, and Figueras, and
invading the country by a force which speedily numbered 116,000 men,
mostly conscripts, for he thought the country easy prey. Murat entered
Madrid as Junot had entered Lisbon. By the most unscrupulous methods,
namely, the enforced abdication of Charles IV and his son Ferdinand,
the Emperor secured the throne, permanently as he fondly imagined, for
his brother Joseph, King of Naples.
In July 1808 the eldest Bonaparte was proclaimed King, and entered his
capital. Within a month he found it desirable to retire behind the
Ebro; his subjects had not only broken into open revolt, but a French
army of over 17,000 troops under Dupont had been forced to capitulate
at Baylen, in Andalusia. Riots, assassinations, and massacres made it
evident that the Spanish temper was considerably more dangerous than
that of the Portuguese; it soon became obvious, moreover, that the
people had employed some of their time in organizing, on a necessarily
rough and ready principle, such forces as they possessed.
The inhabitants of the Asturias, in the north, were the first of the
provincials to apply the torch to the tinder of revolt, after a riot in
Madrid on the 2nd May 1808, and its Junta General called into being a
levy of 18,000 men to protect the principality. It sent two deputies to
England for assistance, which was readily given in money and military
stores. Other provinces likewise selected Juntas, and Galicia also
dispatched representatives to plead its cause in London. Galicia,
adjoining the Asturias on the west, lost little time in following the
warlike example of its neighbours, and the arsenals of Coruña and
Ferrol, made memorable by the Trafalgar campaign, threw in their lot
against Napoleon and contributed no fewer than thirty-two battalions of
regulars and militia to the general forces. Leon and Old Castile also
rose in rebellion, though with less energy. There were too many French
in the Basque Provinces and Navarre for much to be attempted there.
Coming still farther to the east, Catalonia sheltered 16,000 regulars
and many irregular levies, but Aragon, Valencia, and Murcia were very
weak. Andalusia, in the extreme south of the country, was almost as
fortunately placed with regard to troops as Galicia, and the remains of
the French fleet which had escaped Nelson and Collingwood were taken as
they rode in Cadiz harbour.
There was nothing approaching united action, provinces and towns often
vieing in more or less friendly rivalry. They did not understand, or
if they understood they did not realize, that patriotic cliques do
not make for strength. They fought for themselves rather than for the
nation as a whole. Throughout the struggle we find a lack of cohesion.
When we come to look at the earliest available statistics[36] of the
various Spanish armies which formed the front line, we find that their
total strength in regulars, militia battalions, and newly-raised corps
was 151,248. They were divided into five chief armies, namely, of
Galicia, Aragon, Estremadura, the Centre, and Catalonia, under Generals
Blake, Palafox, Galluzzo, Castaños, and Vives respectively. The troops
of the second line numbered about 65,000, and included the Army of
Granada, under Reding, the Army of Reserve of Madrid, commanded by San
Juan, the Galician, Asturian, Estremaduran, Andalusian, Murcian and
Valencian reserves, and the 3000 odd men in garrison in the Balearic
Isles.
The gross total of the French Army of Spain at this period dwarfs the
above figures for all their brave show; it reached 314,612. From this
must be deducted 32,643 detached troops and 37,844 in hospital or
missing, making the “effective” no fewer than 244,125. Of the eight
corps, Victor commanded the 1st, Bessières[37] the 2nd, Moncey the
3rd, Lefebvre the 4th, Mortier the 5th, Ney the 6th, St Cyr the 7th,
and Junot the 8th. There were also Reserve Cavalry and Infantry, the
Imperial Guard, troops marching from Germany, and National Guards
inside the French frontier.[38]
When we consider that on the 31st May 1808 Napoleon had only 116,000
men in Spain and that within six months he had found it necessary to
more than double that number, the desperate nature of the undertaking
becomes plain.
To enter fully into the doings of the various armies throughout the war
would deflect us far out of our proper course, but we shall hear of
them whenever Wellesley was involved.
If you would know the ferocious spirit of the patriots, the hate they
cherished for Napoleon and the French, you have only to turn to any one
of the many Memoirs of men who fought in the Peninsular War. Captain,
later Sir Harry, Smith, who was with Sir John Moore in 1808 and
remained with Wellesley until March 1814, gives many instances in his
vivacious “Autobiography,”[39] but the following must suffice. Smith’s
guide happened to be the owner of the house in which his wife and
baggage were quartered in the village of Offala:
“After I had dressed myself,” he relates, “he came to me and said,
‘When you dine, I have some capital wine, as much as you and your
servants like; but,’ he says, ‘come down and look at my cellar.’ The
fellow had been so civil, I did not like to refuse him. We descended by
a stone staircase, he carrying a light. He had upon his countenance a
most sinister expression. I saw something exceedingly excited him: his
look became fiend-like. He and I were alone, but such confidence had we
Englishmen in a Spaniard, and with the best reason, that I apprehended
no personal evil. Still his appearance was very singular. When we got
to the cellar-door, he opened it, and held the light so as to show
the cellar; when, in a voice of thunder, and with an expression of
demoniacal hatred and antipathy, pointing to the floor, he exclaimed,
‘There lie four of the devils who thought to subjugate Spain! I am a
Navarrese. I was born free from all foreign invasion, and this right
hand shall plunge this stiletto in my own heart as it did into theirs,
ere I and my countrymen are subjugated!’ brandishing his weapon like
a demon. I see the excited patriot as I write. Horror-struck as I
was, the instinct of self-preservation induced me to admire the deed
exceedingly, while my very frame quivered and my blood was frozen,
to see the noble science of war and the honour and chivalry of arms
reduced to the practices of midnight assassins. Upon the expression
of my admiration, he cooled, and while he was deliberately drawing
wine for my dinner, which, however strange it may be, I drank with
the gusto its flavour merited, I examined the four bodies. They were
Dragoons--four athletic, healthy-looking fellows. As we ascended, he
had perfectly recovered the equilibrium of his vivacity and naturally
good humour. I asked him how he, single-handed, had perpetrated this
deed on four armed men (for their swords were by their sides). ‘Oh,
easily enough. I pretended to love a Frenchman’ (or, in his words,
‘I was an Afrancesado’), ‘and I proposed, after giving them a good
dinner, we should drink to the extermination of the English.’ He then
looked at me and ground his teeth. ‘The French rascals, they little
guessed what I contemplated. Well, we got into the cellar, and drank
away until I made them so drunk, they fell, and my purpose was easily,
and as joyfully, effected.’ He again brandished his dagger, and said,
‘Thus die all enemies to Spain.’ Their horses were in his stable. When
the French Regiment marched off, he gave these to some guerrillas in
the neighbourhood. It is not difficult to reconcile with truth the
assertion of the historian who puts down the loss of the French army,
during the Spanish war, as 400,000 men, for more men fell in this
midnight manner than by the broad-day sword, or the pestilence of
climate, which in Spain, in the autumn, is excessive.”
[Illustration: Sir Harry Smith and the Spanish Patriot
Thomas Maybank]
That there was considerable cause for complaint on the part of the
Spaniards is also borne out by other eye-witnesses. Napier records that
a captain and his company came across a peasant’s hut and demanded
provisions, as was their wont. The father explained that his children
were half-starving, and he had but little food left. He was told that
he would be hanged to a beam. Should he give a sign that he repented of
his decision he would be cut down, but not otherwise. He was strung up
without further ado. Then the cries of his wife and children overcame
his noble act of self-sacrifice, and he was released. The soldiers
then took every scrap of food in the miserable dwelling and departed.
A similar method was adopted by a second body of plunderers, and
when they could find nothing they spitefully killed the poor fellow,
doubtless on the charge that he was hiding his stock.
Robert Blakeney, in noticing that most writers have referred to the
Spanish army as “ragged, half-famished wretches,” cautions us that
the men themselves must not be blamed for their unkempt appearance.
“The scandal and disgrace,” he writes, “were the legitimate attributes
of the Spanish Government. The members of the Cortez and Juntas were
entirely occupied in peculation, amassing wealth for themselves and
appointing their relatives and dependents to all places of power and
emolument, however unworthy and unqualified; and although it was
notorious that shiploads of arms, equipments, clothing, and millions
of dollars were sent from England for the use and maintenance of the
Spanish troops, yet all was appropriated to themselves by the members
of the general or local governments or their rapacious satellites,
while their armies were left barefoot, ragged and half-starved. In
this deplorable state they were brought into the field under leaders,
many of whom were scarcely competent to command a sergeant’s outlying
piquet; for in the Spanish army, as elsewhere, such was the undue
influence of a jealous and covetous aristocracy, that, unsupported
by their influence, personal gallantry and distinction, however
conspicuous, were but rarely rewarded.”[40] The same officer, who
joined the 28th Regiment as a boy of fifteen and saw much service in
the Peninsular War, assures us that “Courage was never wanting to the
Spanish soldiers; but confidence in their chiefs was rare.”[41]
An expedition against the American colonies of Spain had been mooted
several times by the British Cabinet, and Sir Arthur Wellesley had
reported on ways and means. The scheme had developed sufficiently for
some 8000 troops to be assembled at Cork preparatory to embarking for
the voyage. It was finally decided that the troops should be used for
a descent on Portugal, with the immediate intention of expelling the
French and raising the enthusiasm of the population against Napoleon.
The force sailed on the 12th July 1808 with Wellesley, now a
Lieutenant-General, in command.
John Wilson Croker, who served his country as Secretary to the
Admiralty from 1809 to 1830, dined with Sir Arthur and Lady Wellesley
in Harley Street on the evening before the General set out for Cork.
After settling some business connected with Ireland, Wellesley “seemed
to lapse into a kind of reverie,” his guest informs us, “and remained
silent so long that I asked him what he was thinking of. He replied,
‘Why, to say the truth, I am thinking of the French that I am going to
fight. I have not seen them since the campaign in Flanders, when they
were capital soldiers, and a dozen years of victory under Buonaparte
must have made them better still. They have besides, it seems, a new
system of strategy, which has out-manœuvred and overwhelmed all the
armies of Europe. ’Tis enough to make one thoughtful; but no matter:
my die is cast, they may overwhelm me, but I don’t think they will
out-manœuvre me. First, because I am not afraid of them, as everybody
else seems to be; and secondly, because if what I hear of their system
of manœuvres be true, I think it a false one as against steady troops.
I suspect all the continental armies were more than half beaten before
the battle was begun. I, at least, will not be frightened beforehand.”
Wellesley made the voyage to Portugal in a fast frigate, and landed
at Coruña on the 20th July 1808, ahead of his troops. This gave him
sufficient time to make a preliminary study of the situation at first
hand, and to be ready for immediate operations on the arrival of his
men.
The first news he received was not encouraging, for it told of the
battle of Medina de Rio Seco, which Bessières had won against the Army
of Galicia on the 14th July. A little relief was afforded by rumours
of success elsewhere, and “the arrival of the British money,” speedily
renewed the flagging spirits of the patriots who were fighting under
such adverse conditions.
The Junta of Galicia, while keenly appreciative of gold, ammunition,
and arms, showed no disposition to avail themselves of the Commander’s
services, and suggested his landing in the north of Portugal as
the government of Oporto was collecting native troops in that
neighbourhood. “The difference between any two men,” Wellesley writes
on the 21st July, the day before he sailed from Coruña, “is whether
the one is a better or a worse Spaniard, and the better Spaniard is
the one who detests the French most heartily. I understand that there
is actually no French party in the country; and at all events I am
convinced that no man now dares to show that he is a friend to the
French.”
To sum up the situation was not an arduous task for Wellesley. He came
to the conclusion without further ado that the only reasonable way to
assist the Spaniards was “to get possession of and organize a good army
in Portugal.” He proceeded to the fleet off Cape Finisterre, spent a
few hours there, and then went to Oporto, where he had an important
conference with the Bishop, who was also head of the Portuguese Junta,
and a number of military officers. It was eventually decided that about
5300 troops, chiefly infantry, stationed at Coimbra under Bernardino
Freire, should be used to co-operate with Wellesley, and that the
remaining forces, namely, 12,000 peasants, should either be employed
in the neighbourhood or in the province of Tras os Montes, where a
French attack seemed probable. Finally a spot in Mondego Bay was chosen
as the most suitable point for disembarkation, especially as it had
the additional advantage of being near Coimbra. On the 1st August the
business commenced, tiresome, and not unattended by danger because of
the heavy surf.
Wellesley had much to think about while this was proceeding. He had
just received the amazing news that he had been superseded by Sir
Hew Dalrymple, with Sir Harry Burrard as second in command, that Sir
John Moore was on his way with 10,000 men, and that he (Wellesley) and
Lieut.-Generals the Hon. J. Hope, Sir E. Paget, and Mackenzie Frazer
were to command divisions. Whatever agitation the new arrangements may
have occasioned Wellesley, he did not allow it to shake his purpose or
lessen his enthusiasm for the cause he had now so much at heart. He
writes to Castlereagh, “Whether I am to command the army or not, or
am to quit it, I shall do my best to insure its success; and you may
depend upon it that I shall not hurry the operations, or commence them
one moment sooner than they ought to be commenced, in order that I may
acquire the credit of the success. The Government will determine for
me what way they will employ me hereafter, whether here or elsewhere.”
He then goes on to sketch a campaign suitable for an army “of 30,000
Portuguese troops, which might be easily raised at an early period; and
20,000 British, including 4000 or 5000 cavalry.”
“The weather was so rough and stormy,” writes one of the soldiers of
the 71st Regiment, “that we were not all landed until the 5th. On our
leaving the ship, each man got four pound of biscuit, and four pound
of salt beef cooked on board. We marched, for twelve miles, up to the
knees in sand, which caused us to suffer much from thirst; for the
marching made it rise and cover us. We lost four men of our regiment,
who died of thirst. We buried them where they fell. At night we came to
our camp ground [Lugar], in a wood, where we found plenty of water, to
us more acceptable than anything besides on earth. We here built large
huts, and remained four days. We again commenced our march alongst
the coast, towards Lisbon. In our advance, we found all the villages
deserted, except by the old and destitute....”
On the night of the 8th, General Spencer and his corps of 4500 men
joined Wellesley from Cadiz, where he had landed at the request of
the Junta of Seville. By the 11th the whole army had arrived at
Leiria, and on the following day it was augmented by 2300 of Freire’s
Portuguese troops, their commander refusing point blank to march with
his remaining forces unless certain impossible demands were met. “My
object,” writes Wellesley, “is to obtain possession of Lisbon, and to
that I must adhere, whatever may be the consequences, till I shall have
attained it, as being the first and greatest step towards dispossessing
the French of Portugal.”
Meanwhile, Junot had sent instructions to Generals Loison and Delaborde
to effect a junction and attack Wellesley. This was prevented by the
timely arrival of the British troops at Leiria, for the former was
some sixteen miles to the south-east and the latter about the same
distance to the south-west. Wellesley was consequently between them.
This necessitated Loison’s return to the southward if he wished to join
Delaborde, and the British General determined to prevent the operation.
On the 14th, Wellesley was at Alcobaço, from whence the French had
retreated but a few hours before.
Although a small engagement took place near Obidos, Wellesley did not
offer battle until two days later because his whole force had not yet
come up. The conflict occurred at Roliça, where Delaborde’s army was
awaiting him on a hill. We know that the allied force totalled 15,000;
the strength of the enemy is uncertain, Wellesley believing it to be
6000, while Professor Oman[42] gives the figure as “about 4350 men,”
basing his conclusion on known official returns previous to the fight
and making allowance for probable losses by sickness.
“On the morning of the 17th,” says the eye-witness already quoted, “we
were under arms an hour before day. Half an hour after sunrise, we
observed the enemy in a wood. We received orders to retreat. Having
fallen back about two miles, we struck to the right, in order to come
upon their flank, whilst the 9th, 29th, and 5th battalion of the 60th,
attacked them in front. They had a very strong position on a hill. The
29th advanced up the hill, not perceiving an ambush of the enemy, which
they had placed on each side of the road. As soon as the 29th was right
between them, they gave a volley, which killed, or wounded, every man
in the grenadier company, except seven. Unmindful of their loss, the
regiment drove on, and carried the entrenchments.[43] The engagement
lasted until about four o’clock, when the enemy gave way. We continued
the pursuit, till darkness put a stop to it. The 71st had only one
man killed and one wounded. We were manœuvring all day, to turn their
flank; so that our fatigue was excessive, though our loss was but
small.”
Such was the battle of Roliça, Wellesley’s first victory over the
French. He was perfectly satisfied with the fighting and moral
qualities of his men as displayed in this engagement.
“I cannot sufficiently applaud the conduct of the troops throughout
this action,” he tells Castlereagh. Although he had a superiority of
strength, the number of soldiers “actually employed in the heat of the
action,” namely, 4635, was, “from unfavourable circumstances ... by
no means equal to that of the enemy.” The returns showed 479 British
killed, wounded, and missing, and the French about 600.