THE AUXILIARIES: THE GERMANS AND THE PORTUGUESE
Of the two classes of foreign troops which assisted to make up the
invincible divisions of the Peninsular Army, the one formed at the
time an integral part of the British military establishment; the other
was the contingent of an allied Power, placed at the disposition of
Wellington, and incorporated with the units of his host, but preserving
its own national individuality.
We must deal with the first class before we proceed to explain the
position of the second. Copying old British precedent, the governments
of George III. had taken into pay a number of foreign corps from the
very commencement of the Revolutionary War. They were the successors of
the Hanoverians against whom the elder Pitt had railed so fiercely in
his hot youth, and of the Hessians who had taken such a prominent part
in the War of American Independence.
The regiments raised in the early years of the great struggle with
France had mainly been composed of Swiss, or of French royalist
_emigrés_. Most of these corps had disappeared by 1809, and of those
of them which survived the majority were doing garrison duty in the
Mediterranean and elsewhere.[233] Wellington never had them under his
hand. The foreign troops which came under his command were nearly all
German, and consisted of regiments raised after the rupture of the
Peace of Amiens.
[Sidenote: The King’s German Legion]
By far the largest number of them belonged to that admirable corps the
King’s German Legion, whose history was written with great care and
enthusiasm by Ludlow Beamish, while the generation which fought in the
Peninsula was still alive. They were the legitimate representatives of
the old Electoral army of Hanover, the comrades of the British troops
in many a fight of the War of the Austrian Succession and of the Seven
Years’ War. When in June, 1803, Napoleon invaded Hanover, and overran
it with the troops of Mortier, the 15,000 men who formed the standing
army of the electorate could make no effective resistance. They laid
down their arms in accordance with the Convention of Lauenburg (July
5, 1803), which disbanded them, and permitted officers and men to go
where they pleased, with the proviso that none of them would bear arms
against France till they should have been exchanged for French officers
or men in the hands of the English Government.[234]
The best and most loyal of the Hanoverian officers began at once
to betake themselves to England, and by the end of the year were
streaming thither by dozens and scores. Men soon began to follow in
considerable numbers, and after two provisional infantry regiments had
been formed in August, a larger organization, to be called the King’s
German Legion, was authorized in December. It included light and line
infantry, heavy and light cavalry, artillery and engineers. All through
1804 new units were being rapidly created, mainly from Hanoverians, but
not entirely, for other recruits of German nationality were accepted.
But all the officers, nearly all the sergeants, and the large majority
of the rank and file came from the old Electoral army. By January,
1805, there were in existence a dragoon and a hussar regiment, four
Line and two Light battalions, and five batteries of artillery.
In November, 1805, when Lord Cathcart’s expedition sailed for the
Weser, to make a diversion in favour of Austria, the whole German
Legion went with him. For a few short weeks the invaders were in
possession of Bremen and Verden, Stade, and Hanover city, before
the news of the disastrous peace that followed Austerlitz came to
hand. During this space immense numbers of Hanoverians flocked to
the colours, some old soldiers, others volunteers who had not served
before. When the army evacuated Hanover in February, 1806, it brought
back so many recruits that the Legion was raised to ten battalions of
infantry and five regiments of horse.
These were almost the last genuine Hanoverians that were raised for
service in the corps, for when the electorate was annexed to Jerome
Bonaparte’s “Kingdom of Westphalia,” it became part of the French
Imperial system, and was subjected to the conscription for Jerome’s
service. Only a few individuals henceforth succeeded in getting to
England and joining the Legion by circuitous ways. But there were
some good recruits obtained at Stralsund and in Denmark during the
Copenhagen Expedition at the end of 1807, when the Legion was for some
weeks in the Baltic.
The battalions and squadrons were still mainly Hanoverian, when, in
1808, the larger half of them was sent to the Peninsula. In that year
one Hussar regiment (the 3rd), two Light and four Line battalions (Nos.
1, 2, 5, 7), landed in Portugal. Of these only the two Light battalions
and the Hussars marched with Moore, and re-embarked for England after
his disastrous retreat. The four Line battalions remained in Portugal,
as did two German batteries, and made part of Wellesley’s original
army of 1809. They were joined in the spring of that year by the 1st
Hussars, who (as has been already mentioned) were considered the most
efficient light cavalry regiment in Portugal, and were long the chosen
comrades of Craufurd’s Light Division.
[Sidenote: Recruiting the K.G.L.]
In the spring of 1811 the K.G.L. contingent in Portugal was increased
by the 2nd Hussars and the two Light Battalions, who returned about two
years after their departure in the company of Moore. In the winter of
1811–12 the two heavy dragoon regiments joined Wellington’s army. Thus
in the beginning of 1812 four of the five cavalry regiments, and five
(the 7th Line battalion had gone home) of the ten infantry battalions
were serving in Spain. But at the end of the year the 2nd Hussars were
drafted back to England, owing to depleted numbers.
It had now become impossible to keep the ranks of the Legion filled
with the genuine Hanoverians who had been its original nucleus.
Communication with the electorate was completely cut off, and German
recruits of any kind had to be accepted. Many of them were volunteers
from the English prison camps, where thousands of Napoleon’s German
troops were lying. Of these only a fraction were Hanoverians born.
The large majority could not, of course, share in the loyalty and
enthusiasm of the original legionaries, being subjects of all manner of
sovereigns in the Rheinbund, who had marched at Napoleon’s orders. The
quality of men was much worse, and many enlisted only to escape from
prison life, and readily deserted when they reached the front, having
no interest in the cause for which they were fighting. From 1811 onward
desertion, not at all usual in the early years of the Legion, became
very common, and plunder and misconduct (previously very rare) were
also rife. Matters became still worse when, later in the war, German
recruits of any sort became so hard to obtain that Poles, Illyrians,
and miscellaneous foreigners of any sort[235] were drafted out to
fill the shrinking ranks. But the splendid Hanoverian officers still
continued to get good service out of a rank and file that was no longer
so homogeneous or loyal as it had been when the war began, and the
regiments of the German Legion, the cavalry in especial, continued to
be among Wellington’s most trusted troops. The charge of Bock’s Heavy
Dragoons at Garcia Hernandez, on the day after Salamanca, was, as has
been already stated, considered by Foy to have been the most brilliant
and successful cavalry attack made in the whole Peninsular War. After
the peace of 1814 all the “mongrels” were discharged, and the officers
and native-born Hanoverian rank and file became the nucleus on which
the new Royal Army of Hanover was built up. The fact that the aliens
had been discharged in 1814 was the cause of all the K.G.L. battalions
appearing at Waterloo in the following year with very small effectives,
in no case reaching 500 of all ranks.
Another foreign corps which served under Wellington from the end of
1810 till 1814 had an origin and a history much resembling that of the
German Legion. This was the Brunswick Oels Jägers, whose history starts
from 1809. The hard-fighting Frederick William, Duke of Brunswick, the
nephew of George III., had made a gallant diversion in Northern Germany
during the Wagram Campaign. At the head of a small body of adventurers,
he had thrown himself into the middle of Jerome Bonaparte’s Kingdom
of Westphalia, and had stirred up an insurrection there, particularly
in his own old hereditary states. He was joined by several thousands
of patriotic volunteers, and inflicted a series of small defeats on
the Westphalians. But surrounded in the end by overwhelming numbers
of enemies, he cut his way to the sea, and embarked the remnants of
his followers aboard English ships at Brake on the Frisian coast.
The British Government at once offered to take the refugees into its
service, and from them organized the Brunswick Oels Jäger and Hussar
regiments, whose black uniform reproduced that of the duke’s old
troops.
[Sidenote: The Brunswick Oels Jägers]
The kernel of this corps was originally excellent—the officers were
North-Germans, largely Prussians, who had risked their lives by joining
an insurrection contrary to the orders of their sovereign, and could
never return to their homes: while the rank and file had been patriotic
volunteers. But, like the German Legion, the Brunswick regiment could
find no more recruits of this sort when it had left Germany, and soon
had to depend for the continuance of its existence on the men in the
English prison camps, who could be induced to buy a release from
confinement by enlisting in the British service. It is clear that the
German Legion got the best of these turncoats, and that the worst fell
to the lot of the Brunswick corps. Not only Germans but Poles, Swiss,
Danes, Dutch, and Croats were drafted into it. They were a motley crew,
much given to desertion—on several occasions large parties went off
together. One great court-martial in 1811 sat on ten Brunswick Oels
deserters in a body, and ordered four to be shot and the rest to be
flogged. Such men had all the vices of the mercenary, though in time of
battle they displayed many of the virtues. Their officers had a hard
task to keep them together, and they could never be trusted at the
outposts. But the regiment was full of good shots and bold adventurers,
and furnished several of the detached rifle companies with which
Wellington strengthened the light infantry of his brigades.
There was, however, one foreign regiment which was even more tiresome
to manage than the Black Brunswickers. This was the _Chasseurs
Britanniques_, a corps formed early in the Revolutionary War from
French royalists, and taken into the British Service in 1801. It was
recruited entirely from deserters of all sorts when it came out to
Portugal in the spring of 1811. At absconding it was far worse than
the Brunswickers—the latter were raised from many races, but at least
they were not born Frenchmen as were the most important section of the
Chasseurs. A glance down the names of the rank and file of the corps
seems to show that after Frenchmen the next most important section
were Italians, and that there were a few Poles and some Swiss, the
latter supplying the men with Teutonic names. It seems to have been
the working rule with the officers who accepted volunteers from the
prison-camps to draft French and Italians into the Chasseurs, while
Germans of all sorts went into the Legion or the Brunswick Corps,
and Swiss partly into the Chasseurs, partly into Watteville’s old
Swiss regiment: Poles and Croats went anywhere. Now a German prisoner
who volunteered into the British service might do so from patriotic
motives, and make an excellent soldier. A Swiss or an Italian or an
Illyrian could not be very heavily blamed for desertion—he had been
conscribed, and sent to fight for Napoleon, in a quarrel that was
not his own. But the French deserter was no longer an old royalist,
like the _emigré_ soldiers of 1794, but one of two things. Either he
was a man who enlisted in the Chasseurs simply to get a chance of
deserting back to his own friends, or else he was a _mauvais sujet_,
a man without patriotic feeling or morality, who was ready to fight
against his own countrymen for pay or plunder. Both classes were amply
represented: the former fled back to the French ranks when they could,
often taking valuable information with them. The latter were the worst
class of mercenaries, since they had no inspiring cause to keep them
true to their colours, while individually they were for the most part
bad characters who had been the curse of their regiments while in the
French service.
[Sidenote: The Chasseurs Britanniques]
The unenviable task of keeping together this body of deserters and
adventurers fell to a body of officers who were almost without
exception furious French royalists, the second generation of the
_emigrés_. They looked upon the war with Bonaparte as a family feud,
in which they fought under any colours (many of their kin were in the
Russian or the Austrian, or the Spanish service) in order to avenge the
death of Louis XVI., the atrocities of the Terror, or the Massacres
of Quiberon. With old loyalty to the Bourbons, and personal hatred
for the new French _régime_ as their inspiration, they were fierce
and desperate fighters. They kept the miscellaneous horde committed
to their charge under an iron discipline, and used the lash freely.
All that their personal courage could accomplish was done, to make
the Chasseurs an efficient fighting force. But they could not stop
desertion, nor frequent misconduct. The most astonishing court-martial
in the war was that held on October 5, 1812, upon no less than 18
Chasseurs who had deserted in a body, two corporals and 16 men, of whom
all but two bore Italian names.[236] This was only the largest case of
a constant series of defections. The regiment melted away whenever it
came near the French lines, and Wellington had a standing order that it
must never be trusted with the outposts. Yet as a fighting body it had
no bad record—as witness Fuentes de Oñoro and many other fields. This
was the work of the zealous service of its officers—and was indeed a
wonderful _tour de force_. The material with which they had to work was
detestable.
These were the only foreign corps, strictly speaking, in Wellington’s
army, but there were two more units which had a large, indeed a
preponderating, German element in them, though they were numbered
in the British line. These were the 5/60th, the rifle battalion of
the “Royal Americans,” and the 97th, a single-battalion corps which
started its existence as Stuart’s “Minorca Regiment,” but got a place
in the British line in 1804 as the “Queen’s Germans.” Neither of these
battalions were purely German either in officers or men: of the 5/60th
the disembarkation roll on its original landing in Portugal shows
eighteen officers with German and ten with British names.[237] The
colonel, De Rottenbourg, was a foreigner, but the second in command,
Davy, an Englishman. The British element was not proportionally so
strong in the rank and file at the commencement of the war, but was
apparently increasing as it went on. English and Irish recruits were
drafted in, in order that such a fine corps might not be spoilt with
the bad class of German recruit such as was alone procurable in 1812 or
1813. When the corps returned from the Peninsula in 1814 it had only
nine officers with German names and twelve with British, and I fancy
the balance in the rank and file between the nationalities had changed
in the same way. When amalgamated with the 1/60th, after the end of the
war it had certainly 400 British to something under 300 Germans in its
ranks.
This was a most distinguished corps: the green-coated rifle companies
which it supplied to many brigades of the Peninsular Army were
universally praised for their cool courage and admirable marksmanship.
The battalion had very few deserters save for one period in 1808–9,
when it had received a batch of recruits from Junot’s Army of Portugal,
who proved unsatisfactory. It would be an absolute insult to the 5/60th
to class them with the Brunswickers or the Chasseurs Britanniques.
The 97th being a single-battalion corps, with nothing to maintain
it but a depôt which could only collect German recruits in the same
fashion as the K.G.L., wasted down to a very small remnant after two
years of war, and was sent back to England in 1811, with a handsome
epitaph of praise by Wellington. It never got to the front again,
remained at home on a very weak establishment, and was disbanded at the
end of the war. Like the 5/60th it was not wholly German; among the
officers we find individuals with British names like Carter, Biscoe,
Wilson, Lyon. Its colonel and one of its two majors were English, and
there was a proportion of non-Germans among its rank and file. Its
Peninsular record if short was distinguished.
[Sidenote: The Portuguese Army in 1809]
It remains to speak about the Portuguese, who formed about two-fifths
of Wellington’s fighting force. We have already had occasion to
speak of the way in which they were distributed among the British
troops, when dealing with the character of Beresford,[238] and the
composition of the Peninsular divisions.[239] But the inner mechanism
of the Portuguese army remains to be detailed. It consisted in 1809 of
twenty-four regiments of infantry of the line, each of two battalions,
save the 21st which had been cut up at Soult’s storm of Oporto in
March, and only mustered one.[240] There were also six light infantry
battalions of caçadores, all raised in 1808–9, and twelve weak
regiments of horse. The artillery, divided into four local regiments
of unequal strength (those of Lisbon, Oporto, Elvas, and Algarve),
supplied nine or ten field batteries, and a number of garrison
companies which manned the guns of Elvas, Almeida, Abrantes, Peniche,
and many other minor fortresses. There was in addition an abnormal
corps, the Loyal Lusitanian Legion, raised by Sir Robert Wilson at
Oporto in 1808, which furnished three battalions of light infantry, a
squadron of horse and an incomplete battery. This legion, which had
done very good service in 1809–10, was absorbed into the regular army
in 1811, its three battalions becoming the 7th, 8th, and 9th caçadores.
At the same time Wellington ordered the raising of three new light
battalions bearing the numbers 10, 11, and 12.
The establishment of a Portuguese two-battalion line regiment was
nominally 1540 men, that of a caçador battalion 770 men: they were
each divided into six strong companies. The cavalry regiments, with a
nominal effective of 590 men, seldom showed 300 apiece in the field.
The infantry corps, with the conscription to keep their ranks full,
could from 1809 onward generally take the field with over 1200 of all
ranks, not including men in hospital or detached, and very seldom
shrank as low as 1000. The caçador battalions were generally somewhat
weaker in proportion to their nominal effective, rarely showing more
than 500 men in line.
The organization of the Portuguese Army was made on a strictly local
basis, each of the twenty-four line regiments having its proper
recruiting district. Two corps were furnished by the province of
Algarve, five by the Alemtejo, four by Lisbon city and its surrounding
district, three by the rest of Portuguese Estremadura, four by
the Beira, four by Oporto and the Entre-Douro-e-Minho, and two by
Tras-os-Montes.[241] Some of the recruiting-districts being less
populous than others, had a greater difficulty in keeping up their
territorial regiments. This was especially the case with the five corps
of the Alemtejo, where the waste bears a greater proportion to the
inhabited land than in other provinces of Portugal.
The caçador battalions were mainly raised in the better peopled north,
which supplied not only the three (Nos. 7, 8, 9), formed from the
Lusitanian Legion (all raised in and about Oporto), but also numbers 3,
4, 6, and after 1811 the additional numbers 10, 11, 12. The southern
provinces only provided numbers 1, 2, 5. These brown and dark green
battalions, whose sombre colours contrasted strongly with the bright
blue and white of the Portuguese line,[242] supplied, along with the
green British riflemen, the main skirmishing line of Wellington’s army.
Eight of the twelve were raised and commanded by British officers, only
the remaining four by Portuguese colonels.
Portugal is not a country abounding in horses, and of the twelve
dragoon regiments of which its cavalry consisted, three (Nos. 2, 3,
12) were never put into the field at all, but utilized as dismounted
troops in garrison duty. Of the other nine corps several were mere
fragments, and none ever took anything like its establishment of 500
sabres to the front. Three hundred was as much as was usually shown:
in the 1811 campaign the two regiments which Wellington used in the
Fuentes de Oñoro campaign had not 450 mounted men between them.
[Sidenote: Beresford’s Work]
Beresford’s conversion of the disorganized and depleted army of which
he took the command in 1809 into a serviceable and well-disciplined
force was a remarkable achievement. He found it in a chaotic
state—Junot had disbanded the whole, save a few battalions which he
sent to France to serve Napoleon. The regiments had collected again
as best they could, but the cadres were incomplete, and the corps of
officers left much to be desired. The Portuguese army before 1808 had
all the typical faults of an army of the _ancien régime_ which had
rusted in a long period of peace. It was full of old or incapable
officers put into place by court intrigues or family influence.
Promotion was irregular and perfectly arbitrary; the lower commissioned
ranks of the regiments were choked with officers whose want of
education and military knowledge made them unfit for higher posts. They
had often grown grey as lieutenants, and were perfectly useless in a
crisis. The pay was very low, and the temptation to make up for the
want of it by petty jobbing and embezzlement too strong.
When Beresford took command, in the early spring of 1809, he had found
about 30,000 regular troops in arms on an establishment which ought
to have shown nearly 60,000. The deficiency in mere numbers could be
remedied by a stringent use of the conscription: but the deficiencies
of organization could not. Beresford complained that “Long habits of
disregard of duty, and consequent laziness, made it not only difficult
but almost impossible to induce many senior officers to enter into any
regular and continued attention to the duties of their situations, and
neither reward nor punishment would induce them to bear up against the
fatigue.”[243] In the lower ranks there was a good deal of zeal, there
being great numbers of young officers from the higher classes, who had
just accepted commissions from patriotic motives; but there was also a
heavy dead-weight of old and slack officers, and an appalling want of
professional knowledge.
Beresford made it a condition of accepting his post that he should
be allowed a free hand to retain, dismiss, or promote, and should
be permitted to introduce a certain amount of British officers into
the army. The Regency granted his request, of necessity and not with
enthusiasm. He then proceeded to use his permission with great energy.
A vast number of old officers, both in the higher and lower ranks,
were put on half pay: only a minority of the colonels and generals
were retained on active service. All the regiments which had been
cursed with notoriously inefficient commanders were placed in charge
of British officers, of whom four or five were drafted into every
unit. Beresford’s system was that “since national feeling required
management,” and “he must humour and satisfy the pride of the nation,”
a sufficient number of the higher places must be left to natives, but
each must have British officers either immediately over or immediately
under him. Where a Portuguese general commanded a brigade, it was
managed that the colonels of his two regiments should both be English.
Where there was a Portuguese colonel, his senior major was English;
where an English colonel, his senior major was Portuguese. In addition
there were two, three, or four British captains in each regiment, but
hardly any subalterns. For, to encourage good officers to volunteer
into the Portuguese service, it was provided that every one doing so
should receive a step in promotion, lieutenants becoming captains, and
captains majors. This system seems to have worked well, though friction
was bound to occur, since the blow to Portuguese national pride, when
so many high posts were given to foreigners, was a heavy one.
[Sidenote: The Portuguese Officers]
Yet according to those who had the working of the newly organized army
in their hands, the effect was very satisfactory. “The Portuguese
captains are piqued into activity and attention, when they see their
companies excelled in efficiency by those under English, and do from
emulation what a sense of duty would never, perhaps, bring them to.
There are a variety of oblique means and by-paths by which the parts
of a Portuguese corps are constantly, and almost insensibly, tending
to return to their old habits, to which they are so much attached. To
nip this tendency, from time to time, in the bud, it is necessary to be
aware of it: without the constant surveillance of English subordinate
officers (who ever mingling with the mass of the men cannot but be
aware of what is going on) the commanding officer can rarely be warned
in time.”[244] D’Urban, the author of this memorandum, adds that one
of his great difficulties was to secure that the junior officers of
the old noble families were kept up to their work. “Even supposing
a sufficient energy of character in a native officer, he does not,
and will not, unless he be a _fidalgo_ himself, exercise coercive or
strong measures to oblige one of that class to do his duty. He is aware
that by doing so he will make a powerful enemy, and all the habits of
thought in which he has been educated inspire him with such a dread of
this, that no sense of duty will urge him to encounter it. Whenever
a regiment is commanded by a non-_fidalgo_ it never fails to suffer
extremely: the noblemen are permitted to do as they please, and set a
very bad example.” The only remedy was to see that any regiment where
the _fidalgos_ were numerous had an English colonel.
Such were the difficulties under which Beresford and the body of picked
British officers whom he selected as his subordinates built up the
army, which by 1811 was fit to take its place in battle line along with
its allies, and in 1812–14 did some of the most brilliant service of
the Peninsular War. Some of the exploits of the Portuguese brigades
hardly obtain in Napier’s history the prominence that is their due.
While he acknowledges the good service of the Light Division caçadores
at Bussaco and elsewhere, there is scarcely praise enough given to
Harvey’s brigade at Albuera, who received and repulsed _in line_ the
charge of Latour-Maubourg’s dragoons, a feat of which any British
troops would have been proud. And the desperate resistance for many
hours of Ashworth’s Portuguese at St. Pierre near Bayonne is hardly
noticed with sufficient gratitude—forming the centre of Hill’s thin
line, pressed upon by overwhelming numbers, and with both flanks turned
from time to time, they fought out a whole long morning of battle, and
never gave way an inch, though their line was reduced to a thin chain
of skirmishers scattered along a hedge and a coppice. The advance of
the 13th and 24th Portuguese at the storm of St. Sebastian, across a
ford 200 yards wide and waist-deep, swept by artillery fire from end
to end, does however receive from Napier its due meed of admiration.
This was a great achievement—every wounded man was doomed to drowning:
on the other side was the blazing breach, where the British assault
had come to a dead stop after dreadful slaughter, but the Portuguese
regiments won their way over the deadly water, and took their share in
the final assault with unflinching courage.
On the whole, the caçador battalions had the finest record in the
Portuguese Army, the cavalry the least satisfactory. Some good work
is recorded of them, _e.g._ the charge of Madden’s squadrons saved
the whole of La Romana’s army at the combat of Fuente del Maestre in
1810, and that of D’Urban’s brigade gave efficient help to Pakenham’s
great flank attack at Salamanca in 1812. But there were some “untoward
incidents,” such as the general bolt at the battle of the Gebora, and
the panic at the combat of Majadahonda, just before Wellington’s entry
into Madrid. Of the last D’Urban writes,[245] “My poor fellows are
still a most daily and uncertain sort of fighting people. At Salamanca
they followed me into the enemy’s ranks like British dragoons;
yesterday they were so far from doing their duty that in the first
charge they just went far enough to land me in the enemy’s ranks. In
the second, which (having got them rallied) I rashly attempted, I could
not get them within 20 yards of the enemy—they left me alone, and
vanished before the French helmets like leaves before the autumn wind.
They require a little incentive of shouts, and the inspiring cheers
of a British line advancing near them. I am afraid they will never be
quite _safe_ by themselves, or in silence.” These are bitter words, but
the record of Majadahonda is not a creditable one.
[Sidenote: The Portuguese Militia]
Of the Portuguese militia and the irregular levies of the Ordenança
it is not necessary to speak here at length. They formed part of
Wellington’s tools for carrying on the war, but not of his army. For,
excepting in the Lines of Torres Vedras, he never put the militia
side by side with the regulars, but always left them out in the open
country, to watch frontiers or harass French lines of communication.
They were under strict orders not to fight—orders which enterprising
officers like Silveira and Trant sometimes disobeyed, to their own
sorrow. Their duty was to screen the countryside against small French
detachments, to make the movement of the enemy save in large bodies
impossible, to capture convoys, or to cut off stragglers. Their most
brilliant exploit was the capture of Masséna’s hospitals at Coimbra in
1810. More could not be expected from levies only intermittently under
arms, not furnished with proper uniforms, and officered by civilians,
or by the inefficients weeded out of the regular army. They were a
valuable asset in Wellington’s hands, but not a real fighting force.
Even far on in the war, so late as 1812, whole brigades of them broke
up in panic in face of a very small force of cavalry—as at the unhappy
combat of Guarda, where Trant and Wilson tried to do too much with
these amateurs.
As to the ordenança or _levée en masse_, it had not even the
organization of the militia, and was largely armed with pikes for want
of muskets. Its only duty was to infest the countryside and prevent
the enemy from foraging. The French shot them as “brigands” whenever
caught; it was their natural practice to retaliate by making away with
all stragglers and marauders who fell into their hands. Wellington
offered a bounty for prisoners, but it was not very often asked for, or
paid.