THE ORGANIZATION OF THE ARMY: BRIGADES AND DIVISIONS
It will probably surprise some readers to learn that Sir Arthur
Wellesley fought out the first campaign in which he held supreme
command, that of Oporto in May, 1809, with no higher organized unit
than the brigade. But this is the fact: the 18,000 infantry of which
he could dispose were distributed into eight brigades of two or three
battalions each, varying in strength from 1400 up to 2500 bayonets. But
Wellesley was not so belated, in failing to form divisions, as might
be thought. They were still rather an abnormal than a usual unit for a
British army: indeed, in the large majority of the expeditions in which
Great Britain had been engaged since 1793, the numbers were so small
that no unit above the brigade had been necessary. But it is notable
that neither in the Duke of York’s first expedition to the Netherlands
in 1793–94, nor in his second in 1799, nor in Abercrombie’s Egyptian
Campaign of 1801 had divisions been formed—though in each of these
cases a very large force had been assembled. When several brigades
acted together, not under the immediate eye of the commander-in-chief,
the senior brigadier present took temporary charge of the assemblage.
In the Low Countries York generally speaks of his army as being
divided into “columns” of two or three brigades each,[143] but there
was no fixity in the arrangement. Abercrombie, on the other hand,
in the last dispatch which he wrote before his victory and death at
Alexandria, lays down the theoretical organization that the army is to
be considered as being divided into three “lines”—the first composed
of three brigades, the second and third of two each. If the _word_
division is used in any official documents of these campaigns, the
term has no technical military sense, but is used as a vague synonym
for a section or part of the army.[144] Indeed, so far as I know, the
first British force during the great French War which was formed into
divisions, in the proper modern sense, was the army which went on the
Copenhagen Expedition of 1807, which was regularly distributed into
four of such units, each under a lieutenant-general, and each composed
of two, three, or four weak brigades, generally of only two battalions.
This was a force of some 26,000 men.
The original Peninsular Army of 1808, which landed at the mouth of the
Mondego, and won the battle of Vimeiro, was not far, therefore, from
being the first British force organized in divisions. It may be noted
that they were rather theoretical than real, for several brigades
had not yet landed when Vimeiro was fought, and Wellesley, while in
temporary command, worked the incomplete army on a brigade system:
no trace whatever of the use of the divisions as real units will be
found in that battle. Indeed, even the theoretical composition of
some of the brigades differed from that actually seen in action. No
genuine divisions were formed in the Peninsula, till Sir John Moore
took command of the army from which its old chiefs, Dalrymple, Burrand
and Wellesley himself had been removed and sent home. We must not,
therefore, be surprised to find that for three months after he landed
at Lisbon in April, 1809, Wellesley worked his 21,000 British troops in
detached brigades, only connected in a formal and temporary way, under
the senior brigadier, when two or more chanced to form a marching or
fighting unit.
But two other points concerning Wellesley’s Oporto campaign deserve
notice. This was the first and only occasion on which he tried the
experiment of mixing British and Portuguese regiments in the same
brigade.[145] To five of the eight brigades forming his infantry a
Portuguese battalion was attached, picked as being one of the best
of the rather disorderly assembly which Beresford had collected at
Abrantes and Thomar. Though the Portuguese fought not amiss during
this short campaign, and are mentioned with praise in Wellesley’s
dispatches, yet the experiment was not continued, evidently because it
was found not to work happily. The five Portuguese battalions were sent
back to Beresford not long after the fall of Oporto.
The other point to be noted in considering Wellesley’s organization
of his army in the Oporto campaign, is that already he had begun the
system of strengthening his skirmishers by the addition to them of a
rifle company per brigade, all taken from the 5/60th. The importance of
this arrangement in the general scheme of his tactics has been already
explained in an earlier chapter.[146]
So much for Wellesley’s first organization of his army. It did not
endure for so much as three months, for on June 18, 1809, a General
Order, dated from the Adjutant-General’s office at Abrantes, gave to
the army the organization in divisions, under which it was to win all
its subsequent victories. In the midst of some insignificant directions
as to forage and ammunition, appears the clause that “as the weather
now admits of the troops hutting, and they can move together in large
bodies, brigades can be formed into divisions, as follows.”
[Sidenote: The Original Four Divisions]
The original disposition was for four divisions only, of which the
first consisted of four brigades, the other three of two brigades each.
All the battalions in them were in the British service, no Portuguese
being included. The four line battalions of the King’s German Legion
were arranged first as one, and then as two brigades of the First
Division. Of the ten brigades into which the infantry of the army were
now divided, seven had two battalions only, the other three three
battalions each. The cavalry, which had recently been increased by the
arrival of two regiments from England, was organized as a division of
three brigades of two regiments each. The artillery, of which only five
field batteries (or “companies” as they were then called) had reached
the front, was not yet told off to the individual divisions in a
permanent fashion, though certain units are generally found acting with
the same division.
As to the command of the divisions, Wellington contemplated that
each should ultimately be in the charge of a lieutenant-general; but
as he had only three officers of such rank at his disposition—Hill,
Sherbrooke, and the cavalry commander Payne—the General Order directs
that “the senior general officers of brigades will respectively take
the command of the division in which their brigades are placed, till
other lieutenant-generals shall join the army.” This placed two
brigadiers, McKenzie and A. Campbell, in temporary charge of the
3rd and 4th divisions, Sherbrooke taking the 1st, and Hill the 2nd.
Sherbrooke went home before a year was out, but Hill was to remain
in command of the 2nd division throughout the war, except during the
short periods when he was on leave. But during his last three years
in the Peninsula, when he was practically acting as commander of
an army corps, the 2nd division was, in fact, under the leadership
of William Stewart as his substitute. The only modification caused
in internal organization by the creation of the new divisions was
that an assistant-adjutant-general, and quartermaster-general, and a
provost-marshal were attached to each of them, and that the brigadiers
acting as division-commanders were authorized to take on some extra
aides-de-camp.
[Sidenote: Rearrangements after Talavera]
It was with this organization that Wellington’s army went through the
Talavera campaign, and the retreat to the Guadiana which terminated
it. The whole force was British, no single Portuguese battalion
accompanying it. The troops of that nation were being employed under
Beresford during this summer, to cover the frontier of Beira, between
the Douro and the Tagus. Long before the campaign was over, more
British reinforcements had begun to arrive at Lisbon, and had been
pushed forward some distance into the interior. One brigade, that
composed of the three light battalions,[147] under Robert Craufurd,
afterwards to be famous in Peninsular annals as the nucleus of the
“Light Division,” got to the front after a tremendous march—somewhat
exaggerated by Napier and by tradition—only a day after the battle
of Talavera. Wellesley incorporated it for a movement in the 3rd
division, in which it finished the campaign. There were seven other
battalions[148] which did not get so far forward, and ultimately
joined Beresford’s Portuguese on the frontier of Spain. In September
Wellington drew down these troops to join him in Estremadura, and made
from them a third brigade each for his 2nd and 4th Divisions. But there
was about this time a shifting about of battalions from division to
division, which it would be tedious to give in detail. The net result
was that at the end of 1809 Wellington had four much stronger divisions
than he had possessed in the summer, the 1st counting nine battalions
instead of its old eight, the 2nd ten instead of six, the 3rd still
six, but the 4th eight instead of five.
The early months of 1810 were spent by Wellington in an expectant
attitude, behind the Portuguese frontier, as he waited for the
inevitable French invasion under Masséna, so long announced and so long
delayed. In this time of long-deferred anxiety, while the Lines of
Torres Vedras were being busily urged towards completion, Wellington
carried out some most important changes in the organization of his
army, which made it (except in the matter of mere numbers) exactly what
it was to remain till the end of the war.
The most notable of these changes was that he made up his mind to
revert to his old plan of April, 1809, for mixing the Portuguese
and British troops. It took a new form, however: instead of placing
battalions of each nationality side by side in his brigades, he
attached a Portuguese brigade of four or five battalions to most of
his British divisions, as a distinct unit. This system was started
with the 3rd and 4th Divisions on Feb. 22, 1810. A complete Portuguese
brigade consisted of two line regiments (each of two battalions) and
one caçador or rifle battalion. The latter was always employed for the
brigade’s skirmishing work; when joined by the four light companies of
the line battalions, it gave a very heavy proportion of light troops to
the unit. This Wellington considered necessary, because of the untried
quality of the whole Portuguese Army, which had not yet taken a serious
part in any general action. In the autumn they justified Wellington’s
confidence in them at the battle of Bussaco, where all of them, and
especially the two caçador battalions attached to the Light Division,
played a most creditable part.
[Sidenote: The Light Division]
The second great innovation made in the spring of 1810 was the creation
of the celebrated Light Division, which came into existence on Feb.
22, 1810; it was formed by taking Robert Craufurd’s brigade, the
1/43rd, 1/52nd, and 1/95th out of the 3rd division, and adding to them
the above-mentioned two Portuguese caçador battalions. Wellington’s
design was to produce for the whole army, by the institution of this
new unit, what he had already done for the individual brigades when
he added their rifle companies to them in April, 1809. The Light
Division was to be, as it were, the protective screen for the whole
army,—its strategical skirmishing line, thrown out far in front of the
rest of the host, to keep off the French till the actual moment of
battle, and to hide the dispositions of the main body. At the head of
this small corps of picked light troops was placed Robert Craufurd,
whom Wellington rightly considered his best officer for outpost and
reconnaissance work. How well this trusted subordinate discharged
the duty laid upon him has been told in the chapter dealing with his
character and exploits. All through the war Wellington used the Light
Division as his screen, for his advanced guard when he was moving to
the front, for his rearguard when he was on the retreat, and he was
never betrayed by it, even after Craufurd’s death had left its conduct
in the hands of chiefs who were not always men of special ability.
After the creation of the Light Division, Wellington had five instead
of four divisions, and another was added to them in the summer of
1810, when in August he created the 5th Division, so long commanded by
General Leith. This was formed by adding to a British brigade, newly
arrived from England,[149] two of the hitherto unattached Portuguese
brigades. A second British brigade was provided in October for Leith,
from troops newly come from Cadiz.[150] These having come to hand, the
5th Division dropped one of its Portuguese brigades, and became a unit
of the normal shape and size, two-thirds British, one-third Portuguese.
It did not, however, receive its caçador battalion (drawn from the
Lusitanian Legion) till 1811.
During the campaign of Bussaco, therefore, Wellington had six
divisions—the old ones numbered 1st to 4th, the Light Division, and
the newly-created 5th. In addition to the Portuguese brigades which
had now been absorbed into the divisions, there remained six more
brigades of that nation which were still unattached. Of these two,
under the Brigadiers Archibald Campbell and Fonseca, were formed into a
division under General Hamilton, which always marched with Hill’s 2nd
Division, but was never formally made part of it. But since Hamilton
invariably moved along with Hill, this pair of units, with their ten
British and eight Portuguese battalions, practically formed a double
division, or a small army corps, if a term which Wellington never
used in the Peninsula may be applied to it.[151] There remained four
more independent Portuguese brigades, those of Pack, Alex. Campbell,
Coleman, and Bradford. By the next year these were reduced to two, as
one brigade was withdrawn to serve with the new British 7th division,
and another with the 2nd. The surviving units continued as unattached
brigades till the end of the war, under a series of commanding
officers, whose succession is sometimes hard to follow.[152] They often
accompanied the main army, but were sometimes separated from it for
special duties, when some force less than a division was wanted, as a
detachment for a subsidiary operation.
[Sidenote: Creation of the 6th and 7th Divisions]
The completion of the Peninsular Army in its final shape, which was not
again to be varied, took place during its stay by the Lines of Torres
Vedras, in the winter of 1810–11. It was then that the two junior
divisions were created, the 6th in October, the 7th early in March.
Their appearance in the field was, of course, due to the arrival of a
considerable number of fresh battalions from England during the autumn
and winter. But Wellington did not take all the new-comers and build up
fresh divisions from them. The 6th Division was made by taking an old
brigade (Archibald Campbell’s) from the 4th Division, and uniting it
to the extra Portuguese brigade of the 5th Division.[153] The second
British brigade of the 6th division was provided some months later
from newly-arrived troops from England.[154] The 4th Division was
compensated for the brigade it had given to the 6th by taking over a
brigade (Pakenham’s) from the 1st Division—while the 1st Division, to
replace this last unit, received three battalions[155] which had just
come out from home.
This was a complicated shift and transfer, intended to secure a level
quality in the divisions by the mixture of recently arrived and veteran
battalions. But in organizing his last creation, the 7th Division,
Wellington was prevented by circumstances from carrying out the same
wise plan. Much belated in their arrival at Lisbon by contrary winds,
the last batch of reinforcements sent to him for the campaign of 1811,
landed when the main army was already in pursuit of Masséna, who had
just started on his retreat from Santarem. Wellington was forced to
keep them together, since he had no time to distribute them when the
troops were all on the move. The 7th division was at first very weak,
containing only one brigade in British pay, consisting of two English
and two foreign corps,[156] and one Portuguese brigade (Coleman).
Two more foreign corps belonging to the German Legion[157] formed
the second brigade of the 7th Division, but did not join it till the
summer, being distracted meanwhile to another field of operations.
The 7th Division was for some time looked on as the “ugly duckling,”
or backward child of the army. Having only two British to four foreign
battalions, it was sometimes called “the Mongrels;” its first début
in action at Fuentes de Oñoro was not a very happy one, as it was
the outlying flank force that was turned and partly cut up by French
cavalry. After this it was never seriously engaged in battle for more
than a year. Moreover, its foreigners earned a bad reputation for their
habit of desertion—a habit not altogether unnatural, for they had been
largely recruited from the pontoons and prison-camps in England.[158]
Hence a cruel joke in the list of divisional nicknames given by
several Peninsular diarists. The sobriquets run: Light Division, _The_
Division; no doubt the title given to it by its own proud members.
First Division: “The Gentlemen’s Sons,” because it contained one,
and afterwards two, brigades of the Foot Guards. The Second Division
is called “the Observing Division,” because it was so often detached
as a containing force against Soult, on the side of Estremadura and
Andalusia, while the main body was more actively engaged on the side
of Leon. So much was this its duty that it was only present at one
general action, Albuera, between the autumn of 1810 and the summer of
1813. There were some brilliant episodes between those dates, such
as the surprise of Arroyo dos Molinos, and the storming of the forts
at Almaraz. The 3rd Division was called “the Fighting Division,” its
fiery leader, Picton, having led it into the forefront of the battle
both at Bussaco and Fuentes de Oñoro, not to speak of smaller fights
like Redinha or El Bodon; it had also done the hardest of work at the
storms of Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajoz. The 4th Division was called the
“Supporting Division;” I suppose because it was sent off to support
the 2nd in Estremadura, and most effectually discharged that duty
at Albuera.[159] The 5th division was called “the Pioneers,” a name
whose source I cannot explain: possibly it refers to some road-making
work done in 1810. The 6th was the “Marching Division,” mainly, I
believe, so-called because down to Salamanca it was accompanying all
Wellington’s great movements from north to south and south to north,
yet never had the good fortune to get into the thick of the battle. At
Salamanca, however, it had as much fighting as any man could crave.
The note to the 7th Division, however, is very malicious, being “We
have _heard_ that there is a Seventh Division, but we have never
_seen_ it.” The fact is, that after its mishap at Fuentes, and some
unsuccessful siege work at the second leaguer of Badajoz, this unit was
very little engaged for two years. In 1813, however, it was gloriously
prominent in the battles of the Pyrenees, and the dash at the French
line, made by Barns’s brigade, was called by Wellington about the best
and most effective attack that he had ever seen.
[Sidenote: Rearrangement of Units]
After the creation of the 7th Division in March, 1811, Wellington never
again organized a new divisional unit. He received, of course, a great
number of new battalions during the years 1811–12–13, but contented
himself with adding them in ones or twos to existing brigades, or at
most gave two or three of them as a fresh brigade to one of the old
divisions. The former practice was the more usual: the only instances
of the latter that I recall being that in 1812 the 1st Division got a
second Guards brigade, and in 1813 a new line brigade (Lord Aylmer’s)
from reinforcements that had just come out. The increase of the total
number of battalions at the front was not so great as might have been
expected, because from time to time corps that had got thinned down
almost to the point of extinction, were sent back to England to be
recruited and reorganized. The number of British battalions (including
the King’s German Legion and two other foreign corps) with Wellington’s
field army in March, 1811, was fifty-eight; in March, 1814, it was no
more than sixty-five, a gain of only seven units. There had been a
considerable exchange of service between the 1st and 2nd battalion of
regiments—in several cases when the 2nd battalion had been the original
unit in the Peninsular Army, it went home when the first battalion
came out, returning as a mere _cadre_ of officers and sergeants, after
turning over its serviceable rank and file to the newly-arrived sister
unit.[160]
There was only two more considerable rearrangements of the internal
organization of a division. One took place in May, 1811, owing to the
fearful losses suffered by the 2nd Division at Albuera. Of the seven
battalions forming the brigades of Colborne and Hoghton, which had
been so dreadfully mauled in holding the all-important heights, two
were sent home, and the four others shrank into a single brigade. To
fill the place of the vanished unit a whole brigade (Howard’s) was
transferred from the 1st to the 2nd Division, and became part of it for
the rest of the war. There was also a shifting about of two brigades
from one unit to another during the winter of 1812–13, after the Burgos
retreat.
The normal divisional organization, however, remained unchanged from
1811 onwards, viz. with three exceptions, each division for the
remaining three years of the war consisted of two British brigades
and one Portuguese, the former having usually three battalions each,
and the latter five. This rule worked for the 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th,
7th divisions. The Light Division, smaller than the rest, had only
three (or three and a half) British battalions, and two of Portuguese
caçadores. The 1st Division alone had no Portuguese attached, but one
of its three (after 1813 _four_) brigades was foreign, consisting of
the line battalions of the King’s German Legion. The 2nd Division (as
explained above) had three British brigades and no Portuguese, but to
it was attached Hamilton’s (and in 1812–14 Ashworth’s) Portuguese, so
that it did not vary from the normal arrangement so much as the 1st
Division.
It would not be quite accurate to say that a British brigade always
had precisely three battalions. Several had four, one five, a few
appeared with only two, but Wellington generally made these last up to
the three-battalion total as soon as he was able, save in two cases.
In the Guards brigades of the 1st Division the two battalions were
always so strong that between them they gave 1800 or 2000 bayonets at
the beginning of a campaign—which was as much as most three-battalion
brigades produced. Moreover, there was an objection to brigading
together units of the Guards and of the line. In the Light Division the
1/43rd and 1/52nd were also very strong and well recruited: each formed
the nucleus of a small brigade, of which the rest was composed of a
Portuguese caçador battalion and a certain number (often six) companies
of the 95th Rifles.
[Sidenote: The Anglo-Portuguese Division]
Roughly speaking, then, an Anglo-Portuguese division usually amounted
to something under 6000 men, save the Light Division, which numbered
under 4000, and the 1st Division, which in 1810, and again in 1813,
had four brigades, and over 7000 men. Of the 5500 or 5800 men in one
of the normal divisions about 3500 were British and 2000 (or a little
more) Portuguese. The 2nd Division, however, was a double-unit, with
5500 British, and attached to it 6500 of Hamilton’s and Ashworth’s
Portuguese.
The mixture of nationalities in the divisions, normal with the
infantry, was nearly unknown in the cavalry arm. The very few
Portuguese regiments which took the field—never more than seven, I
believe—often four only—were normally kept separate. Wellington, for
the first three years of the war, had so few cavalry regiments of
either nation that there was no possibility of dividing them into
divisions. In 1809, as has been already stated,[161] there were only in
the Peninsula six British cavalry regiments, divided into three weak
brigades. Only one more corps joined them in 1810, and in the spring
campaigns of 1811, when he had left three regiments with Beresford in
the south, he had only four to take with him for the pursuit of Masséna
and the battle of Fuentes de Oñoro—a miserable provision—1500 sabres
for an army of over 30,000 men, about a fourth of the proper proportion
in those days.
It was not till later in 1811 that Wellington got cavalry
reinforcements which more than doubled his mounted strength, bringing
him up to fifteen regiments of British and German horse. He did then at
last divide them into two divisions, one of eleven regiments, which
followed his main army, the other of four regiments only, which he left
with Hill in Estremadura. But no Portuguese regiments were put into
either—though he took one brigade with himself (D’Urban’s) for the
Salamanca campaign, and left two brigades (or four regiments) with the
southern force (those of Otway and Madden).
But the organization in two cavalry divisions was dropped in the spring
of 1813—Wellington had had sickening experience of the incapacity of
General Erskine, who commanded the small second division, and, Erskine
being now dead, for the rest of the war all the seven cavalry brigades
were theoretically again made into one division, under Wellington’s
chosen cavalry leader, Sir Stapleton Cotton. As a matter of fact,
Cotton was not allowed any independent command of them, and the
brigades were moved in twos and threes under the direct orders of the
commander-in-chief. Wellington never used his cavalry in mass for any
great separate manœuvre. He employed them for scouting, for covering
his front, and for protecting his flanks, sometimes (but rarely and in
small units) for a blow in battle, such as that which Le Marchant’s
heavy dragoons gave at Salamanca, or Bock’s Germans at Garcia Hernandez
on the following day. But of this we have already spoken when dealing
with the general character of Wellington’s tactics.
[Sidenote: Distribution of Batteries]
The rule of the combination of British and Portuguese units which
prevailed in the infantry, though not in the cavalry, was to be found
in the artillery also. In 1810, when Wellington drafted a Portuguese
brigade of foot into each of his divisions, he also attached to several
of them batteries of Portuguese artillery. So small was his allowance
of British gunners, that in 1811, when he had created his two last
infantry divisions, he would not have been able to provide one field
battery for each of his eight units, unless he had drawn largely
for help on his allies. At the time of Fuentes de Oñoro and Albuera
there were in the field only three British horse artillery batteries
(attached to the cavalry and the Light Division) and five British field
batteries attached to infantry divisions. The 3rd and 7th Divisions
had only Portuguese guns allotted to them. But by utilizing the very
efficient artillery of the allied nation, to the extent of eight
units, Wellington was able to put thirteen field batteries in line,
which enabled him to provide the 2nd, 3rd, 5th, 6th, and Hamilton’s
Portuguese divisions with two batteries apiece, the 1st, 4th, and 7th
with one each. The two nations were worked as successfully in unison in
the artillery as in the infantry organization.
Owing to the arrival of new batteries from home Wellington was able, in
1812, not only to allot one or two field batteries to every division
except the Light (which kept its old horse artillery troop, that of
Major Ross), but to collect a small reserve which belonged to the whole
army and not to any particular division. In 1813–14 he was stronger
still, though the mass of guns of which he could dispose was never
so powerful in proportion to his whole army as that which Napoleon
habitually employed.