WELLINGTON’S TACTICS—THE CAVALRY AND ARTILLERY
Hitherto we have been confining our outlook on Wellington’s tactics
to his use of infantry. But a few words must be added as to his
methods of handling the other two arms—cavalry and artillery. There
are fortunately one or two _memoranda_ of his own which enable us
to interpret his views on the use of these arms, which were to him
mainly auxiliary; for the epigram that he was “essentially an infantry
general” is in the main correct, though it needs some comment and
explanation. In the early part of his Peninsular campaigning he was
forced to be an “infantry general,” since the home government kept him
unreasonably short in the matter of horsemen and guns till the year
1811 was far spent. Moreover, the ground over which he had to fight in
1809–10–11 must be considered.
The Iberian Peninsula may from the point of view of the cavalry
tactician be divided into two sets of regions, in the one of which the
mounted arm is all-important, while in the other it may, almost without
exaggeration, be described as well-nigh negligible as an element of
military strength, being only usable on a small scale, for exploration
and observation, and not being able to be employed effectively in mass.
To the first-named class of regions, the tracts eminently suitable for
the employment of cavalry, belong the great plateau of Central Spain,
the broad arable plains of Old Castile and Leon, from Burgos to Ciudad
Rodrigo and from Astorga to Aranda. Here, in a gently undulating
upland, little enclosed, and mainly laid out in great common-fields,
cavalry has one of the suitable terrains that can be found for it in
Europe—as favourable as Champagne, or the lowlands of Northern Germany.
This is also, almost to the same extent, the case with the loftier and
less cultivated plateau of New Castile, and with the melancholy thinly
peopled moors of La Mancha and Estremadura, where the horseman may ride
ahead for twenty or thirty miles without meeting any serious natural
obstacle, save at long intervals the steep cleft of a ravine, dry in
summer, full of a fierce stream in winter. Nor are the great central
uplands the only tracts of Spain where cavalry finds an admirable field
for operations: the central valley of the Ebro in Aragon, and the
whole of the broad plain of the Guadalquivir in Andalusia, are equally
suited for the employment of the mounted arm, on the largest scale.
Napoleon, therefore, was entirely justified when he attached a very
large proportion of horse to his Army of Spain, and when he uttered his
_dictum_ that great portions of it must inevitably be the possession
of the general who owned the larger and the more efficient mass of
squadrons.
On the other hand, there are large tracts of the Peninsula where
cavalry is almost as useless as in Switzerland or Calabria. Such are
the whole Pyrenean tract on the north, extending from Catalonia, by
Aragon and Navarre, to the Asturian and Galician lands along the
southern shore of the Bay of Biscay. It will be remembered that, during
the Pyrenean Campaign of 1813, Wellington sent back very nearly all his
cavalry to the plain of the Ebro, while Soult left his in the plain of
the Adour. Sir John Moore’s small but fine cavalry force was useless
to him in the Corunna retreat, when once Astorga had been passed, and
the Galician mountains entered. He sent it on before him, with the
exception of a squadron or two kept with the rear-guard. Soult’s more
numerous mounted force, in that same campaign, was only useful in
picking up Moore’s stragglers, and keeping the British continuously on
the march—it was brought to a dead stop every time that the retreating
army showed an infantry rear-guard, and stood at bay in one of the
innumerable Galician defiles.
There is another tract of the Peninsula almost as unsuited as the
Pyrenean and Galician highlands for the use of cavalry—and that is
Portugal, where so much of Wellington’s earlier campaigning took place.
Deducting some coast plains of comparatively small extent, all Northern
and Central Portugal is mountainous—not for the most part mountainous
on a large scale, with high summits and broad valleys, but mountainous
on a small scale with rugged hills of 2000 or 3000 feet, between
which flow deeply-sunk torrents in narrow ravines—where roads are all
uphill and downhill and a defile occurs every few miles. It was the
character of this countryside which made Wellington’s army of 1810–11,
with its very small cavalry force—only seven British and four or five
Portuguese regiments—safe against Masséna’s immensely preponderant
number of squadrons. All through the long retreat from Almeida to the
lines of Torres Vedras the allied army could never be caught, turned,
or molested; the cavalry on both sides was only employed in petty
rear-guard actions, in which the small force brought the larger to a
check in defiles, and generally gave back only when the invader brought
up infantry to support his attack. For all the good that it did him,
Masséna might have left his 7000 cavalry behind him when he entered
Portugal—a few squadrons for exploration was all that he needed. Jammed
in narrow defiles, where they were helpless, his mounted men were often
more of an incumbrance than a help to him.
On the other hand, when the slopes of the Portuguese mountains were
once left behind, Wellington was forced to be most cautious, and to
restrict his action to favourable ground (as at Talavera, and Fuentes
d’Oñoro) so long as the enemy was hopelessly superior in his number
of squadrons. It was only after 1811, when his cavalry regiments
were about doubled in numbers, that he could venture down into the
plains, and deliver great battles in the open like Salamanca—the first
engagement which he ever fought in the Peninsula where his cavalry was
not inferior by a third or even a half to that of the French.
Beside the Pyrenean regions and Portugal, there are other districts
of the Peninsula where the cavalry arm is handicapped by the
terrain—Catalonia for example, where the inland is one mass of
rugged valleys, the coastland of the kingdom of Granada, and the
great ganglion of mountain lands where Aragon, Valencia, and New
Castile meet. But as these were tracts where the British army was
little engaged, I pass them over with a mention. But it must also be
remembered that each of the great upland plateaux of Spain—Leon, New
Castile, La Mancha, and Estremadura, is separated from the others by
broad mountain belts, where the Spanish guerillero bands made their
headquarters, and rendered communication between plain and plain
difficult and perilous.
[Sidenote: French Cavalry Tactics]
In such a country of contrasts, how did the various combatants use
their mounted men during the six long years between Vimeiro and
Toulouse? What was the relative value of the different national
cavalry, and what were its tactics for battle and for the equally
important work of exploration, and of the covering and concealing the
movements of the other arms?
French cavalry tactics had, by 1808, when the war began, developed
into as definite a system as those of the infantry. Napoleon was fond
of massing his horsemen in very large bodies, and launching them at
the centre no less than at the flank of the army opposed to him.
In the times of Marlborough and of Frederic the Great cavalry was
almost always drawn up in long lines on the wings, and used first for
the beating of the hostile containing cavalry, and then for turning
against the unprotected flank of the enemy’s infantry in the centre.
A cavalry dash at a weak point in the middle of the hostile front was
very rare indeed, and only tried by the very few generals of first
rate intelligence, who had emancipated themselves from the old routine
which prescribed the regular drawing up of an army. Marlborough’s
cavalry charge at the French right-centre at Blenheim is almost the
only first-rate example of such a stroke in the old wars of the
eighteenth century. Frederic’s great cavalry charge at Rossbach, which
is sometimes quoted as a parallel, was after all no more than a sudden
rush of the Prussian flank-cavalry at the exposed wing of an army which
was unwisely trying to march around the position of its adversary. But
Napoleon was the exponent of great frontal attacks of cavalry on chosen
weak spots of the enemy’s line, which had already been well pounded
by artillery or weakened in some other way. He would use 6000, 8000,
or (as at Waterloo) even 12,000 men for one of these great strokes.
At Austerlitz and Borodino these charges were made straight at the
enemy’s front: Marengo and Dresden were won by such rushes: Eylau was
only saved from falling into a disaster by a blow of the same kind.
But cavalry had to be used at precisely the right moment, to be most
skilfully led, and to be pushed home without remorse and despite of all
losses, if it was to be successful. Even then it might be beaten off
by thoroughly cool and unshaken infantry, as at Waterloo. It was only
against exhausted, distracted, or untrained battalions that it could
count with a reasonable certainty of success.
All through the war the raw and badly-drilled Spanish armies supplied
the French squadrons with exactly this sort of opportunities. They were
always being surprised before they had been formed by their generals in
line of battle, or caught in confusion while they were executing some
complicated manœuvre. If attacked while they were in line or in column
of march, they always fell victims to a cavalry charge, being from want
of discipline extraordinarily slow to form square. As if this was not
enough, they were often weak enough in morale to allow themselves to
be broken even when they had time to form their squares. The battles
of Medellin, Ocaña, the Gebora, and Saguntum, were good examples of
the power of a comparatively small mass of cavalry skilfully handled,
over a numerous but ill-disciplined infantry. But the little-mentioned
combat of Margalef in 1810 is perhaps the strongest example of the
kind, for there six squadrons of Suchet’s cavalry (the 13th Cuirassiers
supported by two squadrons of the 3rd Hussars) actually rode down in
succession, a whole division of some 4000 men, whom they caught while
forming line of battle from column of march. This was done, too,
despite of the fact that the Spanish infantry was accompanied by three
squadrons of cavalry (who made the usual bolt at the commencement of
the action), as well as by a half-battery of artillery.
[Sidenote: Successes of the French Cavalry]
It was of course a very different matter when the French cavalry had
to face the steady battalions of the British army. Looking down all
the record of battles and skirmishes from 1808 down to 1814, I can
only remember two occasions when the enemy’s cavalry really achieved
a notable tactical success. Oddly enough both fell within the month
of May, 1811. At Albuera there occurred that complete disaster to
a British infantry brigade which has already been described in the
preceding chapter. The other, and much smaller, success achieved by
French cavalry over British infantry at Fuentes de Oñoro, a few days
before the greater disaster at Albuera, has also been alluded to.[97]
These two disasters were wholly exceptional; usually the British
infantry held its own, unless it was absolutely taken by surprise, and
this even when attacked frontally by cavalry while it was deployed in
the two deep line, without forming square. If the British had their
flanks covered, they were perfectly safe, and turned back any charge
with ease.
Indeed the repulse of cavalry by British troops in line, who did not
take the trouble to form square because their flanks were covered, was
not infrequent in the Peninsular War. The classic instance is that of
the 5th Northumberland Fusiliers at El Bodon in 1811, who advanced in
line firing against two French cavalry regiments and drove them off
the heights, being able to do so because they had a squadron or two of
British horse to protect them from being turned. A very similar feat
was performed by the 52nd at Sabugal in 1811: and Harvey’s Portuguese
brigade did as much at Albuera.
Much more, of course, was the square impregnable. When once safely
placed in that formation, British troops habitually not only withstood
cavalry charges at a stand-still, but made long movements over a
battlefield inundated by the hostile cavalry. At Fuentes de Oñoro the
Light Division, three British and two Portuguese squares, retreated at
leisure for _two miles_ while beset by four brigades of French cavalry,
and reached the ground which they had been ordered to take up with a
total loss of one killed and thirty-four wounded. Similarly at El Bodon
the square composed of the 5th and 77th retreated for six miles, in the
face of two cavalry brigades which could never break into them.[98]
Indeed it may be stated, as a rule almost without exception, that
troops in square, whether British or French, were never broken during
the Peninsular War even by very desperate and gallant charges. One of
the best instances of this general rule was the case of the combat of
Barquilla, where two grenadier companies of the French 22nd, surprised
while covering a foraging party by five squadrons of British cavalry,
got away in a level country after having been charged successively by
three squadrons of the 1st Hussars of the German Legion, the 16th and
the 14th Light Dragoons. One of these three squadron-charges, at least
(that of the 14th), had been pushed home so handsomely that an officer
and nine men fell actually among the French front rank, and a French
observer noted bayonets broken, and musket barrels deeply cut into by
the sweeping blows of the light dragoons, who yet failed entirely to
break in.
[Sidenote: Cavalry Action against Squares]
There was indeed only one extraordinary case of properly formed squares
being broken during the whole war, a case as exceptional in one way as
the disaster to Colborne’s brigade at Albuera was in the other. This
was at the combat of Garcia Hernandez, on the morning after the battle
of Salamanca, where the heavy dragoons of the K.G.L. delivered what Foy
(the French historian of the war) called the best charge that he had
ever seen. The rear-guard of Marmont’s army had been formed of the one
division which had not been seriously engaged in the battle, so that
it could not be said to have been composed of shaken or demoralized
troops. Nevertheless, two of its squares were actually broken by
the legionary dragoons, though drawn up without haste or hurry on
a hillside favourable for defensive action. According to Beamish’s
_History of the German Legion_, a work composed a few years later
from the testimony of eye-witnesses, the first square was broken by a
mortally wounded horse, carrying a dead rider, leaping right upon the
kneeling front rank of the square, and bearing down half a dozen men
by its struggles and kicking. An officer, Captain Gleichen, spurred
his horse into the gap thus created, his men followed, a wedge was
thrust into the square, and it broke up, the large majority of the men
surrendering. The second square, belonging to the same regiment, the
6th Léger, was a little higher up the hillside than the first: it was a
witness of the destruction of the sister-battalion, and seems to have
been shaken by the sight: at any rate, when assailed a few minutes
later by another squadron of the German Dragoons, it gave a rather wild
though destructive volley, and wavered at the moment of receiving the
attack, bulging in at the first charge. This was, of course, fatal. The
broken squares lost 1400 prisoners, beside some 200 killed and wounded.
The victorious dragoons paid a fairly high price for their success,
losing 4 officers and 50 men killed, and 2 officers, and 60 men wounded
out of 700 present; the extraordinary proportion of killed to wounded,
54 to 62 marking the deadly effect of musketry at the closest possible
quarters.
This (as I said before) was the exception that proved the rule: the
invulnerability of a steady square was such a commonplace, that Foy and
the other old officers of the Army of Spain, looked with dismay upon
Napoleon’s great attempt at Waterloo to break down the long line of
British squares between La Haye Sainte and Hougoumont, by the charges
of some ten or twelve thousand cavalry massed on a short front of less
than a mile. The Emperor had not allowed for the superior resisting
power of a thoroughly good infantry.
Of fights between cavalry and cavalry, when the two sides were present
in numbers so fairly equal as to make the struggle a fair test of their
relative efficiency, there were comparatively few in the Peninsular
War. In the early days of the war Wellington was too scantily provided
with horsemen, and could never afford to engage in a cavalry battle
on a large scale. He had only six regiments at Talavera in 1809, only
seven in the Bussaco campaign of 1810. When he divided his army for the
simultaneous campaign in Beira and in Estremadura in March, 1811, he
could only give Beresford three regiments, and keep four for himself.
Nor could the deficiency be supplied (as was done in the artillery arm)
by using Portuguese auxiliaries. The cavalry of that nation was so weak
and so badly mounted that it is doubtful whether there were ever so
many as 2000 of them in the field at once. Many of the twelve regiments
were never mounted, and did garrison duty as infantry throughout the
war.
[Sidenote: Wellington and his Cavalry]
It was not till the summer and autumn of 1811 that Wellington at last
began to get large reinforcements of the mounted arm from England,
which more than doubled his strength, for in the campaign of 1812 he
had no less than fifteen regiments instead of seven. In the winter of
1812–13 further reinforcements came out, and in the Vittoria campaign
he had at last a powerful cavalry equal or superior to that of the
French.[99]
Yet even allowing for the weakness of Wellington’s mounted strength
in his earlier campaigns, we must acknowledge that they played a
comparatively small part in his scheme of operations. Though his
dragoons did good service in keeping his front covered, and performed
many gallant exploits (we need only mention Talavera and Fuentes de
Oñoro to instance good self-sacrificing work done), they were seldom
used as part of the main striking force that won a victory. Indeed,
the charge of Le Marchant’s heavy brigade at Salamanca is about the
only instance that can be cited of really decisive action by cavalry
in any of the Duke’s battles. There were other notable successes to
be remembered, but they were in side issues, and often not under
the chief’s own eye—as, for example, Bock’s breaking of the squares
at Garcia Hernandez on the day after Salamanca, and Lumley’s very
creditable victory over Latour-Maubourg at Usagre on May 25, 1811.
Even when Wellington had at last a large cavalry force in 1812–14, it
was seldom found massed, and I believe that more than three brigades
were never found acting together. Such a force as six regiments was
seldom seen in line and engaged. For the use of cavalry as a screen
we may mention the combat of Venta del Pozo, during the retreat from
Burgos in 1812. This was a skirmish fought by two brigades to cover the
withdrawal of the infantry, which had to hurry hard on the way toward
Salamanca and safety.
Something, no doubt, must be allowed for the fact that Wellington
never, till the Waterloo campaign, had an officer of proved ability in
chief command of his cavalry. Stapleton Cotton, who served so long
in that capacity, was not a man of mark. Lumley, who had a short but
distinguished career as a divisional commander, went home sick in 1811,
and Le Marchant, who came out from home with a high reputation, was
most unfortunately killed in his first battle, Salamanca, where his
brigade did so much to settle the fortunes of the day. But allowing for
all this, it remains clear that Wellington made comparatively little
use of the cavalry arm—which could hardly have been expected when we
remember how effectively he had used his horse at Assaye, quite early
in his career. Possibly the fact that he was so hopelessly outmatched
in this arm in 1809–11 sunk so much into his soul, that when he got
his chance, later on, he was not ready to use it. Certainly several
cases can be cited where it was not duly used to press a completed
victory—most particularly after Vittoria and Orthez. There is no
concealing the fact that Wellington’s reluctance to use great cavalry
attacks was, at bottom, due to his doubts as to the tactical skill of
his senior officers, and the power of his regiments to manœuvre. He
divulged his views on the subject, twelve years after the war was over,
in a letter to Lord John Russell, dated July 31, 1826. “I considered
our cavalry,” he wrote, “so inferior to the French from want of order,
that although I considered one of our squadrons a match for two French,
yet I did not care to see four British opposed to four French, and
still more so as the numbers increased, and order (of course) became
more necessary. They could gallop, but could not preserve their order.”
[Sidenote: Some Reckless Cavalry Charges]
This seems a very hard judgment, when we examine in detail the cavalry
annals of the Peninsular War. There were cases, no doubt, where English
regiments threw away their chances by their blind fury in charging, and
either got cut up from pursuing an original advantage to a reckless
length, or at any rate missed an opportunity by over-great dispersion
or riding off the field. The earliest case was seen at Vimeiro just
after Wellington’s first landing in the Peninsula, when two squadrons
of the 20th Light Dragoons, after successfully cutting up a beaten
column of infantry, pushed on for half a mile in great disorder, to
charge Junot’s cavalry reserves, and were horribly maltreated—losing
about one man in four. An equally irrational exploit took place at
Talavera, where the 23rd Light Dragoons, beaten off in a charge against
a square which they had been ordered to attack, rushed on beyond it,
against three successive lines of French cavalry, pierced the first,
were stopped by the second, and had to cut their way back with a loss
of 105 prisoners and 102 killed and wounded—nearly half their strength.
An equally headlong business was the charge of the 13th Light Dragoons
at Campo Mayor on March 25, 1811, when that regiment, having beaten in
fair fight the French 26th Dragoons, and captured eighteen siege-guns
which were retreating on the road, galloped on for more than six miles,
sabring the scattered fugitives, till they were actually brought up
by the fire of the fortress of Badajoz, on to whose very glacis they
had made their way. The captured guns, meanwhile, were picked up by
the French infantry who had been retreating along the high-road behind
their routed cavalry, and brought off in safety—the 13th not having
left a single man to secure them. Here, at any rate, not much loss was
suffered, though a great capture was missed, but similar galloping
tactics on June 11, 1812, at the combat of Maguilla, led to a complete
disaster. Slade’s heavy brigade (1st Royals and 3rd Dragoon Guards)
fell in with L’Allemand’s French brigade, the 17th and 27th Dragoons.
Each drew up, but L’Allemand had placed one squadron in reserve far
beyond the sky line, and out of sight. Slade charged, beat the five
squadrons immediately opposed to him, and then (without reforming or
setting aside any supports) galloped after the broken French brigade in
complete disorder for a mile, till he came parallel to the unperceived
reserve squadron, which charged him in flank and rear: the rest of
the French halted and turned; Slade could not stand, and was routed,
having 40 casualties and 118 prisoners. Wellington wrote about this
to Hill: “I have never been more annoyed than by Slade’s affair. Our
officers of cavalry have acquired a trick of galloping at everything.
They never consider the situation, never think of manœuvring before
an enemy, and never keep back or provide for a reserve. All cavalry
should charge in two lines, and at least one-third should be ordered
beforehand to pull up and reform, as soon as the charge has been
delivered, and the enemy been broken.”[100]
In the first three of the cases mentioned above, the discredit of
the rash and inconsiderate pressing on of the charge falls on the
regimental officers—in the last on the brigadier, Slade. It must be
confessed that Wellington was not very happy in his senior cavalry
officers—Erskine, Long, and Slade have all some bad marks against
them—especially the last-named, whose proceedings seem nearly to have
broken the heart of the lively and intelligent diarist Tomkinson, of
the 16th Light Dragoons, who had the misfortune to serve long under
him. Stapleton Cotton, the commander of the whole cavalry, was but a
mediocrity; every one will remember his old chief’s uncomplimentary
remarks about him _àpropos_ of the siege of Bhurtpore. The man who
ought to have been in charge of the British horse during the whole war
was Lord Paget, who had handled Sir John Moore’s five cavalry regiments
with such admirable skill and daring during the Corunna campaign: his
two little fights of Sahagun and Benevente were models in their way.
But he was unhappily never employed again till Waterloo—where his
doings, under his new name of Lord Uxbridge, are sufficiently well
known. But a question of seniority, and an unhappy family quarrel with
the Wellesleys (having absconded with the wife of Wellington’s brother
Henry, he fought a duel with her brother in consequence) prevented him
from seeing service under the Duke in the eventful years 1809–14. Of
the cavalry generals who took part in the great campaigns, after Paget
the most successful was Lumley, who has two very fine achievements to
his credit—the containing of Soult’s superior cavalry during the crisis
of the battle of Albuera, and the combat of Usagre, of May 25, 1811,
noted above. This was considered such an admirable piece of work by the
enemy, that it is related at great length in Picard’s _Histoire de la
Cavalerie_, alone among all British successes of the Peninsular War.
[Sidenote: Lumley’s Victory at Usagre]
It needs a word of notice, as it is hardly mentioned in the Wellington
dispatches, and very briefly by Napier. Latour-Maubourg had been
sent by Soult to push back Beresford’s advanced posts, and discover
his position. He had a very large force—two brigades of dragoons and
four regiments of light cavalry, in all 3500 sabres. Lumley, who was
screening Beresford’s movements, had only three British regiments (3rd
Dragoon Guards, 4th Dragoons, 13th Light Dragoons), 980 sabres, and
Madden’s and Otway’s Portuguese brigades, 1000 sabres, with 300 of
Penne Villemur’s Spanish horse. Wishing to contain the French advance
as long as possible, he took up a position behind the bridge and
village of Usagre, a defile through which the French must pass in order
to reach him. Latour-Maubourg, relying on the immense superiority of
numbers which he possessed, was reckless in his tactics. After sending
off a brigade of light horse to turn Lumley’s position, by a very long
detour and distant fords, he pushed his other three brigades into
the village, with orders to cross the bridge and press the enemy in
front. Lumley was showing nothing but a line of Portuguese vedettes,
having withdrawn his squadrons behind the sky line. He was apprised
of the turning movement, but, knowing the ground better than the
French, was aware that it would take a very much longer time than the
enemy expected, so resolved to hold his position to the last moment.
He allowed the two leading regiments of Bron’s dragoons to pass the
bridge and form on the nearer side, and then, while the third regiment
was crossing the river, and the second brigade was entering the long
village, charged suddenly in upon the first brigade, with six English
squadrons in front and six Portuguese squadrons on the right flank.
The two deployed French regiments were thrown back on the third, which
was jammed on the bridge. Hence they could not get away to reform and
rally, the road behind them being entirely blocked, while the second
brigade in the village could not get to the front to give assistance.
All that Latour-Maubourg could do was to dismount its leading regiment
and occupy with it the houses on each side of the bridge, from which
they kept back the victorious British by their carbine fire. Lumley,
meanwhile, dealt with the three routed regiments at his leisure,
killing or wounding 250 men and capturing 80 prisoners before the
disordered wrecks succeeded in re-crossing the river. Latour-Maubourg,
warned by this bloody check, showed for the future no anxiety to press
in upon Beresford’s cavalry screen.
How _not_ to deal with an exactly similar situation, it may be
remarked, was shown on the 23rd October of the following year, 1812,
by two British brigadiers, who, charged with the covering of the
retreat of Wellington’s army from Burgos, were holding a position
behind the bridge of Venta del Pozo or Villadrigo, when the part
of the French cavalry immediately opposed to them, the brigade of
Faverot, ten squadrons strong, came down to the defile. Faverot, like
Latour-Maubourg at Usagre, took the hazardous step of ordering his
leading regiment to pass the bridge at a trot, and form on the other
side. This Bock, the senior British brigadier, allowed it to do, and
was right in so doing, for the proper moment to strike was when the
enemy should have half or three-quarters of his men across the bridge,
and the rest jammed upon it. But Bock allowed the psychological moment
to pass, and did not charge till the French brigade had almost entirely
crossed, and could put very nearly equal numbers in line against him.
Then, moving too late, with some squadrons of Anson’s brigade in
support, he came to a desperate standing fight with the enemy, in
which both suffered very heavily. But when all the British and German
Legion regiments were already engaged, the rearmost squadrons of the
French, which had crossed the bridge under cover of the fighting
line, fell upon Bock from the flank, and turned one of his wings; the
British cavalry had to give way and retreat, till it was covered by the
infantry of the 7th Division. If Bock had charged five minutes earlier,
he would have nipped the French column in the middle, and probably have
destroyed the leading regiments. The French brigade, as it was, lost 18
officers and 116 men, Anson and Bock about 200, among whom were four
officers and 70 men prisoners.
[Sidenote: Surprise of Arroyo Dos Molinos]
On the whole, I am inclined to think that Wellington was a little
hard on his cavalry. There was, of course, considerable justification
for his criticisms. There was a want of decision and intelligence
among some of his brigadiers, and a tendency to headlong and reckless
charging straight ahead among many of his regimental officers. But
looking dispassionately at the cavalry work on both sides, it is
impossible to say that the French marshals were any better served.
There is no striking instance in the annals of the British campaigns
of 1809–14 of the army, or even a division, being surprised for want
of vigilance on the part of its cavalry screen, while several such can
be quoted on the French side—especially Ney’s surprise at Foz d’Arouce
on March 15, 1811—caused by his light cavalry under Lamotte having
completely failed to watch the roads, or the better-known rout of
Girard at Arroyo dos Molinos later in the same year. On that occasion
an infantry division, accompanied by no less than two brigades of light
cavalry, was attacked at dawn and dispersed with heavy loss, owing to
the fact that the cavalry brigadiers, Bron and Briche, had taken no
precautions whatever to feel for the enemy. They, like the infantry,
were completely surprised, being caught with the horses unsaddled,
and the men dispersed among houses; hence the chasseurs were taken
prisoners in large numbers by Hill’s sudden rush, one of the brigadiers
and a cavalry colonel being among the 2000 unwounded prisoners
taken. There is no such large-scale surprise as this among all the
records of the British cavalry. The worst that I know were those of
a squadron of the 13th Light Dragoons on April 6, 1811, near Elvas,
and a very similar one of the 11th Light Dragoons two months later,
not far from the same place. In the last case the disaster is said to
have happened because the regiment had only just landed from England
after long home-service, and the captain in command lost his head from
sheer inexperience. With regard to this I may quote the following
pregnant sentence, from the _Diary_ of Tomkinson, who wrote far the
best detailed account of the life of a cavalry regiment during those
eventful years. “To attempt giving men or officers any idea in England
of outpost duty was considered absurd, and when they came abroad they
had all to learn. The fact was that there was no one to teach them.
Sir Stapleton Cotton (who afterwards commanded the cavalry in Spain)
once tried an experiment with the 14th and 16th Light Dragoons near
Woodbridge in Suffolk. In the end he got the supposed enemy’s vedettes
and his own all facing the same way. In England I never saw nor heard
of cavalry taught to charge, disperse, and reform, which of all things,
before an enemy, is most essential. Inclining in line right or left
is very useful, and that was scarcely ever practised.” He adds in
1819: “On return to English duty, after the peace, we all continued
the old system, each regiment estimating its merit by mere celerity of
movement. Not one idea suggested by our war experience was remembered,
and after five years we shall have to commence all over again, if we
are sent abroad.”
In short, the proper work of cavalry, apart from mere charging, had to
be learnt on Spanish soil when any regiment landed. But it was in the
end picked up by the better corps, and on the whole the outpost and
reconnaissance work of the Peninsular Army seem to have been well done,
though some regiments had a better reputation than others. Much of the
work of this kind speaks for itself. The most admirable achievement
during the war was undoubtedly that of the 1st Hussars of the K.G.L.,
who, assisted afterwards by the 14th and 16th Light Dragoons, kept for
four months (March to May, 1810) the line of the Agueda and Azava, 40
miles long, against a fourfold strength of French cavalry, without
once letting a hostile reconnaissance through, losing a picket or even
a vedette, or sending a piece of false information back to General
Craufurd, whose front they were covering.
[Sidenote: Wellington’s Cavalry Tactics]
Allusion has been made in the opening words of this chapter to
Wellington’s memorandum for the tactical management of cavalry. It was
only issued after Waterloo, in the form of “Instructions to Officers
commanding Brigades of Cavalry in the Army of Occupation,” but, no
doubt, represents the tactics which he had evolved from his Peninsular
experience.[101] Too long to give in entirety, it is worth analysing.
The heads run as follows:—
(1) A reserve must always be kept, to improve a success, or to cover
an unsuccessful charge. This reserve should not be less than half the
total number of sabres, and may occasionally be as much as two-thirds
of it.
(2) Normally a cavalry force should form in three lines: the first and
second lines should be deployed, the reserve may be in column, but so
formed as to be easily changed into line.
(3) The second line should be 400 or 500 yards from the first, the
reserve a similar distance from the second line, if cavalry is about to
act against cavalry. This is found not too great a distance to prevent
the rear lines from improving an advantage gained by the front line,
nor too little to prevent a defeated front line from passing between
the intervals of its supports without disordering them.
(4) When, however, cavalry is charging infantry, the second line should
be only 200 yards behind the first, the object being that it should be
able to deliver its charge without delay, against a battalion which
has spent its fire against the first line, and will not be prepared for
a second charge pushed in rapid succession to the first.
(5) When the first line delivers its attack at a gallop, the supports
must follow at a walk only, lest they be carried forward by the rush,
and get mingled with the line in front at the onset. For order in the
supports must be rigidly kept—they are useless if they have got into
confusion, when they are wanted to sustain and cover a checked first
line.
A note as to horses may finish our observations on the cavalry side
of Wellington’s tactics. In countless places, in diaries no less than
dispatches, we find the complaint that the trooper of 1810 was, when
not well looked after by his officers, a bad horse-master—careless as
to feeding his mount, and still more so as to saddle-galls and such
like. It is often remarked that the one German light cavalry regiment
in the original Peninsular Army, the 1st Hussars of the King’s German
Legion, set an example which some other regiments might have copied
with advantage, being far more conscientious and considerate to their
beasts. It is interesting to find that the French cavalry reports have
exactly the same complaints, and the number of dismounted men shown
in French regimental states as a consequence of sick horses was as
great as our own. Several times I have found the report that when a
considerable number of French cavalry had been captured, quite a small
proportion of their horses could be turned over to serve as remounts
for their captors, because of the abominable condition in which they
were found. The fact was that the climate and the food seem to have
been equally deleterious to the English and French horses: a diet of
chopped straw and green maize—often all that could be got—was deadly
to horses accustomed to stable diet in England or France. Wellington
sometimes actually imported hay and oats from England; but they
could not be got far up country, and only served for regiments that
chanced to be put into winter quarters near the sea. Practically
all the remounts came from England—the Portuguese and Spanish horses
having been tried and found wanting many times. In 1808 the 20th
Light Dragoons were embarked without horses, being ordered to mount
themselves in Portugal; but the experiment failed wholly.
[Sidenote: Wellington’s Artillery Tactics]
Only a short note is required as to Wellington’s use of artillery. In
his early years of command he was almost as weak in this arm as in
cavalry. There was not one British battery per division available in
1809. But the Portuguese artillery being numerous, and ere long very
efficient, was largely used to supplement the British after 1810. Yet
even when it had become proportioned to the number of his whole army,
the Duke did not use it in the style of Bonaparte. He never worked
with enormous masses of guns manœuvring in front line, and supporting
an attack, such as the Emperor used. Only at Bussaco, Vittoria, and
Waterloo do we find anything like a concentration of many batteries
to play an important part in the line of battle. Usually the Duke
preferred to work with small units—individual batteries—placed in
well-chosen spots, and often kept concealed till the critical moment.
They were dotted along the front of the position rather than massed,
and in most cases must be regarded as valuable support for the infantry
that was to win the battle, rather than as an arm intended to work for
its independent aims and to take a special part in war. Of several of
Napoleon’s victories we may say that they were artilleryman’s battles;
nothing of the kind can be predicated of any of Wellington’s triumphs,
though the guns were always well placed, and most usefully employed, as
witness Bussaco, Fuentes de Oñoro, and Waterloo.
As to Wellington’s use of siege artillery, we must speak in a later
chapter.[102] It was, through no fault of his own, the weakest point
in his army: indeed till 1811 he never had a British battering-train,
and in the early sieges of Badajoz he worked _in forma pauperis_, with
improvised material, mainly Portuguese, and very deficient in quality.
The record is not a cheerful one; but it must be said that the home
authorities, and not Wellington, were the responsible parties for any
checks that were suffered. A great general who is not an artillery
or engineering specialist must trust to his scientific officers, and
certainly cannot be made responsible for shortage of men and material
due to the parsimony of his masters at home.
So much for the great Duke’s tactics. We shall presently be
investigating his system of military organization—the inner machinery
of his army. But before dealing with it, we shall have to spare some
attention for his greater lieutenants, whose individualities had an
important share in the management of his army.