INDEX

END OF VOL. IV

Oxford: Horace Hart, M.A., Printer to the University

FOOTNOTES

[1] Dispatches, vii. pp. 23-4, from Cartaxo, December 2.

[2] Also to Lord Liverpool, Cartaxo, December 29.

[3] De Grey’s brigade at Valle, with the Light Division; Anson’s on the left at São João; Slade’s at Porto de Mugem on the right, near the Tagus.

[4] Wellington to Liverpool, December 29. ‘Whatever may be Masséna’s opinion of his chance of success in an attack on the allied army, I am convinced that he will make it, if he receives orders from Paris, whatever the amount of the reinforcements sent to him.’ Dispatches, vii. p. 84.

[5] See vol. iii. p. 462.

[6] The first hint of this occurs in a letter to Lord Liverpool, from Cartaxo, December 21, in which Wellington ‘thinks it not improbable that a large part (if not the whole) of the French army of Andalusia may be introduced into the southern part of this kingdom [Portugal].’

[7] These arrangements are taken from the unpublished diary of D’Urban, the Quarter-Master-General of the Portuguese army.

[8] Wellington (December 8) sarcastically thanks Stewart for sending him plans for an attack on the enemy, but utterly scouts them. Dispatches, vii. pp. 36-7.

[9] See pp. 269-79 of vol. iii.

[10] Mentioned in Wellington’s dispatch of December 10 to Lord Liverpool, but the date December 4 is fixed by D’Urban’s diary. For exploits of Fenwick in November and December see Tomkinson’s Diary, pp. 58 and 66.

[11] The next messenger who got through was Major Casabianca, who started on January 21st with 400 men, and safely reached Rodrigo. See Fririon’s Journal of the Campaign of Portugal, p. 129.

[12] For a description of this see Lemonnier-Delafosse’s Mémoires, p. 95.

[13] ‘Les détachements se subdivisent à mesure qu’ils s’éloignent: et il en résulte que les hommes isolés des chefs se livrent à toute espèce de rapines et même à des cruautés sur les pauvres paysans,’ says Noël (p. 128).

[14] The story of the marauding sergeant ‘Maréchal Chaudron’ and his band, given by Marbot (ii. pp. 418-19), is probably exaggerated by that lively narrator—the scale is too large. But there was undoubtedly some foundation for the tale; see Lemonnier-Delafosse, Mémoires, p. 103.

[15] Guingret, pp. 124-6.

[16] See Colonel Noël’s account of his food-getting and his stores, Souvenirs militaires, pp. 128-9.

[17] See Lemonnier-Delafosse, Souvenirs, pp. 106-7.

[18] See vol. iii. pp. 470-1.

[19] See vol. iii. pp. 450-1.

[20] See vol. iii. p. 462.

[21] For details see D’Urban’s diary, January 1, 4, and 5, 1811. The French batteries on the first day shelled Carlos de España’s cantonments across the river, but with no effect.

[22] So Fririon in his Campagne de Portugal, p. 128.

[23] There is a description of the meeting in the diary of Ney’s aide-de-camp Sprünglin, who was in command of the party which actually met D’Erlon’s dragoons, p. 460.

[24] See vol. iii. p. 481.

[25] Napoleon to Berthier, November 3 and November 20, Correspondance, 17,079 and 17,141.

[26] ‘Qu’il rouvre avec un gros corps les communications avec le prince d’Essling, mais que je compte, du reste, sur sa prudence de ne pas se laisser couper d’Almeida.’ Napoleon to Berthier, November 20.

[27] ‘Il est donc important qu’il ne fasse point de petits pacquets.’ Ibid.

[28] See vol. iii. p. 276.

[29] These dispositions are given in D’Urban’s unpublished diary.

[30] For Wilson’s movements I have his letters to Trant and D’Urban of January 3, 1811—the one in D’Urban’s correspondence, the other in the Trant papers lent me by Captain Chambers, R.N.

[31] Wellington to Hill, Dispatches, vii. p. 86, Dec. 30, 1810.

[32] Chaby, ii. p. 272, gives January 5th as the date of the combat of Villa da Ponte, but all the other authorities place it on the 11th.

[33] According to Thiébault, then commanding at Salamanca, Claparéde’s rather wild excursion was due to mere desire for plunder; he accuses him of having raised, and put into his private purse, great contributions at Moimento, Lamego, and other towns which he occupied for a few days. (Mémoires, iv. 422-3.)

[34] Date uncertain, perhaps January 22, as Wellington knew he was there on January 26.

[35] The Emperor to Berthier, September 29, no. 16,967 of the Correspondance de Napoléon.

[36] Not in the Correspondance, but in the form of a letter from Berthier to Soult, which Soult answers at great length in his Dispatch from Seville of December 1.

[37] ‘Le 5e Corps, au lieu de suivre La Romana, et par là de menacer la rive gauche du Tage vis-à-vis de Lisbonne (pour empêcher les Anglais d’avoir toutes leurs forces sur la rive droite), s’est replié honteusement sur Séville.’ Correspondance, no. 17,131.

[38] Soult to Berthier, no. 24 in Appendix to Belmas, vol. i. p. 472.

[39] The total of the troops available against Mortier in December would have been, giving net totals, with sick and detached men all deducted:—

Spanish:
Ballasteros’s Division5,000
Mendizabal’s Division6,000
Permanent garrison of Badajoz4,200
5 battalions left behind by La Romana at Albuquerque, Olivenza, &c.2,000
Carlos de España’s brigade on the Tagus near Abrantes1,500
Cavalry of the Army of Estremadura2,600
Artillery500
Portuguese:
Brigade of Line Regiments, Nos. 5 and 17, at Elvas2,500
Brigade of Cavalry under Madden, 3rd, 5th, 8th regiments950
Hamilton’s Division (with Hill), 2nd, 4th, 10th, 14th Line4,800
Portuguese Militia, 4 regiments, Beja, Evora, Villa Viciosa, Portalegre, in Elvas, Jerumenha, and Campo Mayor4,000
5th Caçadores (with Hill)450
Fane’s Cavalry (with Hill), 1st, 4th, 7th, 10th regiments1,200
Artillery (4 batteries)600
British:
Hill’s Second Division5,250
13th Light Dragoons350
Artillery (3 batteries)400
Total42,300

Mortier had in the 5th Corps 11,500 infantry, 1,200 cavalry, and about 700 artillery in his 7 batteries.

[40] Soult to Berthier, December 1, 1810, from Seville.

[41] This dispatch of March 29 (Nap. Corresp., no. 17,531), which must have reached Soult about the end of April, when Masséna had long retired to Spain, told him that he should have withdrawn all the 4th Corps from Granada save the six Polish battalions, and have drawn in Godinot’s brigade from Cordova, i. e. have abandoned the whole eastern half of Andalusia, and have tried to hold nothing but the siege lines of Cadiz and the city of Seville. But this was ‘wisdom after the event.’ In December Napoleon was harping upon a diversion with 10,000 men to Montalvão and Villaflor, not ordering the evacuation of the greater part of Andalusia.

[42] January 25, Napoleon to Berthier, ‘Il est nécessaire d’écrire au duc de Dalmatie qu’après la prise de Badajoz il doit se porter sur le Tage, avec son équipage de pont, et donner les moyens au prince d’Essling d’assiéger et prendre Abrantès.’ Correspondance, no. 17,295.

February 5, Napoleon to Berthier, ‘Écrivez au duc d’Istrie (Bessières, now commanding the new “Army of the North”) ... que tout paraît prendre une couleur avantageuse, que si Badajoz a été pris dans le courant de Janvier, le duc de Dalmatie a pu se porter sur le Tage.’ [Unfortunately Badajoz did not surrender till March 11, and Soult was extremely lucky to get it so early.] Correspondance, no. 17,335.

[43] Napoleon to Berthier, March 29, Correspondance, no. 17,531.

[44] Soult to Berthier, from the siege lines in front of Olivenza, dated January 22.

[45] He calls it ‘la détermination que j’avais prise sur de simples avis indirects.’ To Berthier, January 25.

[46] For the explanation of all this see Soult to Berthier, already quoted, from Seville, December 1, acknowledging the receipt of the imperial orders of October 26th.

[47] Belonging to that division of the Army of the Centre under Dessolles which Soult had borrowed for the conquest of Andalusia, and which King Joseph, despite of many demands, could never get back.

[48] Certainly not with the loss of 1,500 men as Gazan alleged, still less with that of 3,000 as stated by Napier.

[49] By far the best account of this wild excursion is to be found in La Mare’s account of the Estremaduran Campaign of 1811-12 (Paris, 1825). Toreno exaggerates the losses of the French, which cannot have been heavy, as Martinien’s Liste des officiers tués, &c., shows only two or three casualties in Gazan’s division.

[50] Soult reports eighteen guns surrendered: but Herck says in his dispatch that only eight were serviceable.

[51] The original garrison was Voluntarios de Navarra, 1,150 bayonets properly belonging to O’Donnell’s division, which was at Lisbon with La Romana. The reinforcements thrown in at the last moment were four battalions, 2,400 bayonets, from the regiments Merida, Truxillo, Barbastro, and Monforte—the two former part of the original army of Estremadura, the two latter part of Del Parque’s old army from the north.

[52] Herck’s miserable exculpatory dispatch may be found in Chaby, iv. pp. 200-1.

[53] The regiment sent back with the prisoners was the 63rd, the one borrowed from Victor: it had not been at the siege, but supporting Latour-Maubourg at Albuera. The garrison left in Olivenza was one battalion of the 64th.

[54] Except the two nearest the river, San Vincente and San José, which are a little lower.

[55] Wellington, Dispatches, vii. p. 98, dated January 1st, to Charles Stuart reports that from Cadiz advices of December 23 he is aware that a concentration is taking place at Seville, though Mendizabal knows nothing of it.

[56] Wellington’s covering letter to La Romana’s dispatch is in Wellington Dispatches, vii. p. 99.

[57] Wellington, Dispatches, vii. 143.

[58] Ibid., vii. 165, where a letter to Henry Wellesley fixes the resolve to send off these troops to ‘yesterday,’ i. e. January 19th.

[59] Viz.

La Carrera (including Carlos de España) about2,500infantry.
Charles O’Donnell’s division5,000”
Remains of Mendizabal’s division, which had thrown four battalions into Olivenza and two into Badajoz3,500”
Butron’s cavalry, about2,500cavalry.
Madden’s Portuguese cavalry brigade950”
Artillery450artillery.
Total14,900in all.

[60] Wellington calls the disease ‘spasms of the chest’; the Spanish authorities term it an aneurism.

[61] See especially Wellington to Liverpool, January 26th, in Dispatches, vii. 196-7. The corresponding letter to Mendizabal is less important, because it is written to a Spanish correspondent.

[62] See vol. i. pp. 371-4.

[63] See vol. iii. pp. 6-7.

[64] Ibid., 40.

[65] See Wellington, Dispatches, vii. p. 115, for note as to libels published by ‘a vagabond named Calvo.’

[66] See vol. iii. p. 325.

[67] This is ‘Memorandum to the Marquis of La Romana,’ to be found in Wellington, Dispatches, vii. 163, with date January 20, three days before that of the death of the Marquis.

[68] The French put into action six battalions of the 34th and 40th of Phillipon’s brigade [two in trench-guards, four in reserves], and one each of the 28th Léger, 64th, 88th, and 100th. The total force of these was, according to Belmas’s figures, well over 5,000. Carlos de España had apparently six battalions of his own, and two or three more from the other divisions, very much the same force in mere numbers. But quality had also to be taken into consideration. La Mare gives the French loss as 6 officers and 48 men killed, 25 officers and 337 men wounded.

[69] This remark, a very just one, is made by Arteche in his great History, ix. p. 193.

[70] Valladolid, Osuna, Zafra, and La Serena now became part of the garrison, with a strength of about 2,000 bayonets.

[71] 3 officers and 48 men killed and wounded according to La Mare, Siége de Badajoz, p. 58.

[72] Three battalions each of the 34th, 88th, and 100th Line.

[73] Thirteen squadrons of the 4th, 14th, and 26th Dragoons, the 2nd and 10th Hussars, the 21st and 27th Chasseurs, and the Spanish light cavalry regiment of Juramentados.

[74] See his pathetic letter in Wellington, Supplementary Disp., vii. p. 67.

[75] The statement that only a few men escaped into Badajoz is disproved by the figures of the surrender-rolls of March 11th, which show 1,108 men of La Carrera’s division, 554 of Virues’s division, and 995 of battalions of Garcia’s division which had not been told off to the regular garrison, as laying down their arms.

[76] There escaped into Portugal, beside the cavalry, the greater part of the regiments La Union from Garcia’s division, Rey and Princesa from that of Virues, Vittoria from that of La Carrera, and fragments of Zamora, and 1st of Barcelona. The whole, reorganized into new battalions, made a weak brigade of 1,800 men under Carlos de España in April.

[77] ‘Depuis la mort du Général Menacho l’ennemi avait éprouvé un certain découragement, dont l’effet se faisait connaître par l’absence de cette force morale qui fait agir les hommes et qui donne le mouvement et la vigueur. Il n’osa plus nous attaquer dans nos batteries, dans nos tranchées, afin de détruire en quelques moments l’œuvre d’un jour. Il ne profita pas des moyens de chicane et des subtilités que la nécessité et l’industrie font inventer.’ La Mare, p. 98.

[78] For all these interesting details see the verbatim report of the Council of War in the Appendix to Arteche, vii. pp. 544-7.

[79] ‘Hallarse la guarnicion en una total decadencia’ (opinion of Col. Ponce de Leon of 1st Barcelona). The garrison ‘no es de la primera classe en general’ (opinion of Col. Zamora of the Zafra regiment). ‘El soldado, cansado ya de la mucha fatiga, trataría de salvarse’ (opinion of Col. Hernandez of the Majorca regiment).

[80] See Soriano da Luz, iii. 337-8.

[81] D’Urban (Beresford’s chief of the staff) has in his diary under March 8th: ‘At 3 o’clock the Marshal crossed the river (Tagus) at Torres Novas and had an interview with Lord Wellington. The immediate relief of Badajoz, whose danger becomes imminent, has been judged desirable, this to be done with the 2nd and 4th Divisions. The Marshal returned at 8. Orders sent to Punhete to throw the bridge of boats over the Tagus at Tancos for the re-passage of General Stewart (2nd Division) and the passage of General Cole (4th Division). The troops still on the south bank of the Tagus are thrown into march upon Portalegre [near Elvas]. Orders to Mr. Ogilvie, the commissary, to take measures for supplies southward. General Menacho’s last sally, in which he is unfortunately killed, has probably saved the place by gaining of time, even if but for a few additional days.’ On the evening of the 9th March the movement was stopped, on a false rumour that Masséna was offering battle near Thomar, but news of it had been sent to General Leite at Elvas, who passed it by semaphore from Fort La Lippe to San Cristobal, which safely received it. It was not till the 12th that the 2nd Division was ordered to Crato in the Alemtejo, and Beresford reached Portalegre only on the 20th, nine days after Badajoz fell. Wellington says (Dispatches, vii. 360-1) ‘the Governor surrendered on the day after he received my assurances that he should be relieved, and my entreaty to hold out till the last moment.’ Cf. ibid., 367.

[82] Arteche (ix. 229) says that they used the breach, but La Mare, an eye-witness, says that the Trinidad gate was the point of exit. Soriano da Luz, using some Portuguese source unknown to me, says that only some Spanish sappers came down the breach slope, and they with difficulty.

[83] This was known to Wellington and Beresford on the 14th, or the night of the 13th, as is shown by Wellington, Dispatches, vii. p. 359.

[84] Less two battalions left in Badajoz as garrison, and the 100th of the Line also left with Mortier.

[85] I find in D’Urban’s diary under January 13: ‘Concurring testimony of deserters, &c., announces some general movement on the part of the enemy. Lord W. inclines to imagine that this will be a retreat, and that the retreat will be by the Mondego; to this he is inclined by Claparéde being ordered to take post at Guarda. But I have my doubts if anything like retreat has yet entered the head of Masséna.’ This is borne out by Wellington to Beresford of same day. (Dispatches, vii. 138.)

[86] Lord Liverpool to Wellington, February 20, 1811.

[87] Lord Liverpool to Wellington, September 20, 1810.

[88] Hansard for 1811, vol. xix. 397.

[89] Plumer Ward’s Diary, i. 406.

[90] Note that Perceval and Liverpool inherited the paper currency of Pitt, and were not responsible for its creation.

[91] For some curious anecdotes as to the dearth of silver change see Lord Folkestone’s speech quoted in Yonge’s Life of Lord Liverpool, i. 368.

[92] ‘How can you expect that we can buy specie here [London] with the exchange 30 per cent. against us, and guineas selling at 25 shillings?’ Huskisson to Wellington (private), 19th July, 1809. Wellington MSS., see Mr. Fortescue’s British Statesmen of the Great War, p. 254.

[93] For notes on this see Walpole’s Life of Perceval, ii. pp. 207-8.

[94] To Charles Stuart, Dispatches, vii. p. 462.

[95] To Admiral Berkeley, Dispatches, vii. p. 415.

[96] ‘The recent augmentation of your force must be considered as made with reference to the present exigency.... We are very anxious, not with a view of abandoning, but for the purpose of maintaining the contest in the Peninsula for an indefinite time, that when the present crisis shall appear to be over, you should send home the excess of your force, after keeping 30,000 effective rank and file for Portugal, and a sufficient garrison for Cadiz, selecting of course those regiments to be sent home which are least efficient, and consequently least fitted for active service.’

[97] Mr. Fortescue writes: ‘This was unfair. Perceval and Liverpool had deliberately turned their backs upon Pitt’s old policy of spasmodic efforts all over the world, in favour of a steady and persistent feeding of the war in one quarter—the Peninsula. Wellington himself had approved the change in his letters of 1810, had named the amount of money that he wanted, and fixed the figure of the reinforcements that he asked. But in 1811 he never ceased to ask for more men and more money, till Liverpool was obliged to remind him very gently, that he was going far beyond his own estimates.’ He had got to the stage of writing that Government having embarked on the contest, and chosen the best officer they could find, must give him the largest army they could collect, and reinforce it to the utmost, without asking precisely how many men were wanted, and for what precise objects. It was Mr. Fortescue who indicated to me two important passages about Liverpool which are omitted from the printed version of Wellington’s letters to Pole of January 11 and March 31, 1811, in Supplementary Dispatches, vii. pp. 40-3 and 93.

[98] See especially Wellington to Dudley Perceval (the premier’s son), June 6th, 1835, a protest against Napier’s wild misrepresentations.

[99] See Wellington to Beresford from Cartaxo, February 12. (Dispatches, vii. 253.)

[100] Ibid. ‘The cause of the state of deficiency is the old want of money to pay for carriage.’

[101] Their names, San Miguel, Loulé, Candido Xavier, and Manuel de Castro, are given by Fririon (Masséna’s aide-de-camp) in his diary. Major Leslie tells me that he cannot identify them in the Portuguese army-list of 1810, and thinks that two of them at least were only Ordenança officers.

[102] For details as to all this see Wellington to Charles Stuart, February 10. (Dispatches, vii. 237-8.)

[103] This fear is expressed in a letter to Charles Stuart dated January 16 (Dispatches, vii. 147), on the news that Mortier’s cavalry had seized the bridge of Merida. ‘The passage of the Tagus by Mortier removes to a distant period the danger of Alemtejo; but it shows that we may be attacked at an early period in our positions. For Mortier, supposing him to march by Almaraz, can be on the Zezere in the first days of February, and I think it possible that the battle for the possession of this country, and probably the fate of the Peninsula, will be fought in less than a month from this time.’

[104] All this may be found in Wellington’s dispatch of January 12, 1811, where he details the successive positions which Beresford must try to hold.

[105] For a description of this front see Jones, Lines of Torres Vedras, pp. 43-5.

[106] From a long note by D’Urban in his unpublished diary, dated January 22, 1811.

[107] See pp. [77-9].

[108] The best account of this reconnaissance is in the Journal of Sprünglin, pp. 462-3.

[109] There is a good account of this march by Foy in his Vie Militaire, ed. Girod de l’Ain, pp. 127-8.

[110] For details of this see the Diary of Tomkinson of the 16th Light Dragoons. His own regiment alone brought in 82 prisoners between January 19 and February 23. There were some very fine feats of arms on a small scale in this outpost fighting, notably a capture made by Lieutenant Bishop on January 19th, when with six men he charged twenty chasseurs, and took eight with twelve horses.

[111] The best account of this council of war is Foy’s (in his Vie Militaire, pp. 129-32), which is contemporary. It differs largely from Koch’s narrative in his Vie de Masséna. It is quite convincing when compared with Masséna’s explanatory dispatch to Berthier of March 6th, which sets forth his own arguments for the retreat. They are the same which Foy attributes to him in the précis of the meeting of February 18th.

[112] ‘Bientôt viendrait le moment où on serait forcé de se jeter sur l’une ou sur l’autre rive; et alors on pourrait trouver les têtes-de-pont entourées par une contrevallation de l’ennemi, ou bien l’armée se verrait forcée à recevoir bataille avec un fleuve au dos, en voulant se porter sur la rive droite.’ Masséna to Berthier, March 6.

[113] It is interesting to see from Masséna’s dispatch of March 6 that he was aware of the existence both of the Setubal and the Almada fortifications.

[114] Foy, present at the council, where he was asked to comment on the Emperor’s last orders, which he had brought himself, renders Masséna’s decision in his diary as: ‘Que faut-il donc faire? Tenir ici le plus longtemps que nous pourrons: voir d’ici là ce qui se passera dans l’Alemtejo: puis, si rien n’est changé, nous transporter sur le Mondego, en laissant un corps d’armée à la rive gauche de cette rivière.’ [Vie Militaire, p. 131.]

[115] This comes from Masséna’s dispatch to Berthier of March 6th.

[116] For details as to this see Foy’s narrative quoted above.

[117] Journal of Noël of the Artillery of the 8th Corps, p. 137.

[118] For general statements as to the miserable state of the material of the army see Masséna’s dispatch to Berthier of March 6, 1811.

[119] This plan comes out in full in the diary of Beresford’s Chief of the Staff. D’Urban writes under the 23rd February: ‘The Marshal tells me that Lord Wellington means to attack, and his (Beresford’s) own share is that he must turn and force the French left, when the reinforcements should arrive. Some of them are already on their march up from Lisbon. On their arrival Lord Wellington will attack the French right, on the Rio Mayor, while Marshal Beresford crosses the Tagus at Abrantes, and attacks the force on the Zezere at the same time. Orders to inquire how far, in attacking the corps at Punhete, Amoreira can be turned, and the heights of Montalvão gained, with consequent advantage of ground in coming on the enemy upon the Zezere.’ The local reports were prepared by D’Urban on the 25th. The only allusion to the plan in the Wellington dispatches is in the last paragraph of the letter to Lord Liverpool of February 23rd, in which the phrase occurs, ‘I cannot venture to detach troops [to Estremadura] even after the reinforcements shall arrive: and if the weather should hold up a little I must try something else-of greater extent but more doubtful result.’

[120] The Chasseurs Britanniques had landed very early in February, and a wing of the 51st on the 25th of that month. But the bulk of the transport fleet from England only was reported at the Tagus mouth on March 4th, and began to land men next day—the critical day of Masséna’s retreat. The ships with the German light brigade had sailed late, and came in even later in proportion.

[121] Most of these orders will be found in the early (6 a.m.) dispatch of March 5th to Beresford. The rest are mentioned as having been ordered to take place on the 5th in the dispatch to Beresford of the 6th.

[122] See Wellington to Beresford, Dispatches, vii. p. 344.

[123] Wellington to Beresford, Dispatches, vii. p. 346.

[124] Memoirs of George Simmons of the 95th, p. 137.

[125] From the Memoirs of Donaldson of the 94th, p. 104. Passing through Porto de Mos on September 29, 1910, I thought that I would try to discover whether any memory of this horrid tragedy survived. The sacristan, of whom I made inquiries, at once took me to a ruined chamber to the left of the church, and told me that 200 people had been burned there in the ‘time of the French.’ A new sacristy had been built to replace it in 1814, the chamber being held accursed.

[126] See Chapter II above, [p. 60], and Wellington, Dispatches, vii. 350-1.

[127] See pp. [57-8] above.

[128] Correspondance, no. 17,531. ‘Le siège de Cadix n’aurait pas couru les chances qu’il vient de courir si, en partant pour l’Estrémadure, le duc de Dalmatie avait mis le corps du général Sebastiani et la division Godinot sous les ordres du Maréchal duc de Bellune [Victor] ... il aurait alors eu trois fois plus de troupes qu’il n’en aurait fallu.’

[129] ‘Soult vient de me faire une grande sottise: il aurait dû laisser à Victor le commandement de toutes les troupes d’Andalousie. Il ne l’a pas fait, de peur que Victor ne fût aussi grand que lui.’ Foy’s interview with Napoleon in his Vie Militaire, p. 140.

[130] See above, [p. 33].

[131] See above, [p. 31].

[132] Whom Wellington (in his dispatch to Graham of December 31) calls ‘the German deserters’—they having been mainly men who had absconded from the French armies.

[133] Correspondance, no. 17,131.

[134] See vol. i. pp. 442-3.

[135] Schepeler, the Prussian officer in Spanish service, whose notes on all the Cadiz affairs are so important, owing to his having served through them under Blake and La Peña, says that the latter was generally allowed to be incompetent—he was a regular old woman. He tells an illustrative anecdote, of a guerrillero chief who came to concert a bold plan with the general, and went away at once, saying, ‘Can I hope to get anything out of an officer who, as I find, is called “Donna Manuela” by every one about him?’ Schepeler, Geschichte der spanischen Monarchie, i. 134. La Peña had kept his place, despite of his Tudela fiasco, through family and salon intrigues—he is said to have been the ‘tame cat’ of certain great ladies of the patriotic party.

[136] He played in the first recorded cricket match in Scotland in 1785.

[137] See his diary, quoted in Delavoye’s Life of Lord Lynedoch, p. 32.

[138] Graham survived Barrosa for thirty years, lived to be ninety-six, and after Waterloo founded the United Service Club, as a place of rendezvous for his old Peninsular comrades, who looked upon him as a kind of father.

[139] The delays in the start caused an unexpected conjunction in the mountains of the south. Beguines and his roving brigade, warned to be ready to join in the campaign by the 23rd, came down from the Ronda mountains in search of the army, advanced as far as Medina Sidonia, and skirmished there with Victor’s flank guard, two battalions under General Cassagne, which were always kept watching the mountains (March 25). Beaten off, Beguines retired to his usual haunts, and waited for signs of the expedition. His premature attack—premature through no fault of his own—called Victor’s attention to his rear, and caused him to fortify Medina Sidonia, and to reinforce Cassagne with three battalions and a cavalry regiment.

[140] These battalions were, I believe, Ciudad Real and 4th Walloon Guards.

[141] As the names of the Spanish battalions engaged in this expedition have never before been collected, it may be worth while to mention here that they were—Lardizabal’s division: Campomayor, Carmona, Murcia (2 batts.), Canarias; Anglona’s division: Africa (2 batts.), Sigüenza, Cantabria (2 batts.), Voluntaries de Valencia.

[142] I do not know these roads, nor the field of Barrosa, but Colonel Churcher, of the Royal Irish Fusiliers, who is well acquainted with them, tells me that the track (five miles inland from the coast) marked on the British staff map of 1810, from Bolonia to Vejer, is no proper road at all, and unfit for wheeled traffic to this day; while the Tarifa-Medina Sidonia road is bad, but can carry vehicles. He tells me that he has actually crossed the Laguna de la Janda at its centre in dry weather, so shallow does it become.

[143] There is a good note on the pros and cons of the two routes in Schepeler, i. 161.

[144] According to Schepeler La Peña had sent an officer out from Tarifa in a fishing-boat on the 1st March, to let the garrison of Cadiz know that he might not keep his time accurately; this messenger was stopped at sea by an English brig, and since he was disguised and had no English pass, he was detained some time as a suspicious character, and only reached Cadiz on the 4th.

[145] It chanced that the battalions in Leval’s division were individually stronger than those in the others—averaging 640 men each, against little over 500 in Villatte’s and Ruffin’s divisions—officers not counted. The brigading was—Ruffin, 1/9th Léger, 1/96th Ligne, 1 and 2/24th Ligne, 2 Provisional battalions of grenadiers, Leval 1 and 2/8th Ligne, 1 and 2/54th Ligne, 1/45th, 1 Provisional battalion of grenadiers. See Appendix at end of volume giving exact strength.

[146] See Graham’s diary, p. 465.

[147] The pinewood is now much shrunken, and covers only the northern part of its original breadth. See an article on the topography of Barrosa by Colonel Verner in the Saturday Review for March 9, 1911.

[148] Cruz Murgeon was commanding the two battalions attached to the British division, Ciudad Real and 4th Walloon Guards.

[149] The rest of the Spanish cavalry being now with La Peña by the Almanza creek.

[150] There is a lively account of the altercation in the memoirs of Browne’s ardent admirer Blakeney (A Boy in the Peninsular War, p. 187).

[151] All this from the graphic description in the autobiography of Blakeney, Browne’s adjutant, p. 188.

[152] The biography of General Dilkes seems to explain this matter. Duncan, the artillery commander, thought that he would be going into action without any infantry supports, and rode to the nearest brigadier—this was Dilkes—to ask him to lend a few companies to cover the guns. Dilkes assented, and told the Coldstream companies in the middle of his column to fall out and follow the guns. But Graham had already set aside the two companies of the 47th, from Barnard’s battalion, for the same purpose. When Duncan found them waiting for him in the edge of the wood, he told the officer commanding the Coldstreamers that he was not wanted, and these two companies marched off and fell into line in a gap in the front of Wheatley’s brigade.

[153] Blakeney, p. 195.

[154] For further details see the letters of General Dilkes, Colonels Norcott, Stanhope, and Onslow, and Major Acheson, in Wellington’s Supplementary Dispatches, vii. pp. 127-31.

[155] Vigo-Roussillon says that he personally captured Colonel Bushe, who was riding away slowly from the front, disabled by a wound. This seems contradicted by the very circumstantial evidence of Bunbury, adjutant of the 20th Portuguese, who says that Bushe had his horse shot under him, and was mortally wounded, that he declined being sent to the rear, and was propped up and left behind by his own orders. French soldiers were seen rifling him as he lay.

[156] Surtees, Twenty Years in the Rifle Brigade, p. 119.

[157] See letter in Rait’s Life of Lord Gough, vol. i. p. 53.

[158] A hereditary name of glory in the 87th. The present representative of the family won his Victoria Cross at Ladysmith in 1900.

[159] These two companies, whose losses, as it is seen here, were heavy, must have been engaged with part of the left battalion of the French 54th.

[160] Wellington to Graham, from Santa Marinha, March 25th. (Dispatches, vii, 396.)

[161] See the figures of losses in [Appendix No. V].

[162] Lapéne, Campagnes de 1810-11, p. 121.

[163] See, for a curious note concerning this incident, Lapéne, Appendix, p. 256.

[164] It is sometimes asserted that La Peña proposed to continue the campaign, and was foiled by Graham’s departure into the Isla. But we have Graham’s own statement, in his dispatch to Henry Wellesley of March 24, that no such proposal was made. ‘The only regret expressed to me at Head Quarters on the morning of the 6th, on knowing of my intention to send the British troops across the Santi Petri, was that the opportunity of withdrawing the Spanish troops during the night was lost, and on my observing that after such a defeat there was no risk of attack from the enemy, a very contrary opinion was expressed.’

[165] See [p. 62] above.

[166] The forces of the French corps five days later (but the numbers were much the same still) were, to be exact [Return of March 15 in French Archives Nationales]—

Reynier’s 2nd Corps10,251men
Junot’s 8th Corps9,794”
Loison’s Division4,734”
Ney’s other Divisions, horse and foot11,066”
Montbrun’s Reserve Cavalry2,435”
Conroux’s Division of the 9th Corps5,000”
Artillery Reserves, Train, Sappers, Marine Battalion, &c.5,855”
Total49,135men

all exclusive of sick and wounded.

[167] Wellington to Baccelar, March 8: ‘I conclude that Colonel Trant will have retired from Coimbra upon the bridge of the Vouga, which he should destroy, and from thence on Oporto. The enemy have no boats, and I hope to be able to press them so hard that they can get none on the Mondego.... If the enemy should turn toward Vizeu, you will of course do all that you can to annoy them in their march, but send all your baggage, &c., across the Douro.’ (Dispatches, vii. p. 347.)

[168] Viz.:

1st Division8,100of all ranks,all British
3rd Division4,500”and1,550Portuguese
4th Division4,800”and2,100”
5th Division3,800”and1,800”
6th Division3,850”and2,300”
Light Division3,400”and900”
Pack’s Portuguese Brigade2,100
Ashworth’s Portuguese Brigade2,500
Cavalry, British2,430
Cavalry, Portuguese 500
Artillery, British1,000
Artillery, Portuguese 500
Engineers, Waggon Train, &c.200
Total British32,080and14,250Portuguese

The 2nd Division, left behind near Abrantes, had about 6,100 of all ranks. Hamilton’s Portuguese Division about 4,200, Fane’s British (13th Lt. Dragoons) and Portuguese cavalry was about 1,000 sabres, artillery of both nations for the Army of Estremadura about 500. The 7th Division, now being formed at Lisbon, was composed of 2,800 British and 2,300 Portuguese. There were two battalions not belonging to the 7th Division marching up with it, with 1,300 bayonets (2/52nd, 2/88th).

[169] Picton to Col. Pleydell, a letter printed in Robinson’s Life of Picton, i. 385.

[170] Narrative of Delagrave: ‘La cavalerie anglaise se déployait avec une certaine audace, et semblait vouloir provoquer un combat. Le Général Montbrun s’avança fièrement pour l’accepter. Les Anglais avaient des chevaux plus frais que les nôtres, et ils semblaient s’en prévaloir. Mais nos gens avaient pour eux le vrai courage et le sang-froid. Quelques escadrons de dragons, les plus avancés, en voyant qu’on les chargeait au grand galop, s’arrêtèrent et poussèrent le sabre en avant, et dans cette position reçurent de pied ferme l’ennemi. Cette manœuvre eut un plein succès. L’ennemi fut rompu, désuni, il eut beaucoup d’hommes et de chevaux tant tués que blessés. Ensuite les nôtres, dont pas un n’avait été touché, tirant un prompt parti de leur bon ordre, et du désordre des Anglais, chargèrent à leur tour, et eurent en quelques minutes bon marché de cette troupe, qui avait d’abord montré tant d’audace.’ (Campagne de Portugal, pp. 191-2.)

Narrative of Tomkinson, 16th Light Dragoons: ‘We followed the enemy up to the Pombal plain, where they showed eight squadrons formed on the heath in front. The Hussars advanced with one squadron in front and three in support, on which the enemy’s skirmishers retired, and the whole eight squadrons began to withdraw. We passed the defile in our front, and came up in time to join the Hussars in their charge. We charged and broke one squadron of the enemy, drove that on to the second, and so on, till the whole eight were altogether in the greatest confusion, when we drove them on to their main support. We wounded several and took a few prisoners, and should have made more, but that they were so thick that we could not get into them. The French officers called on the men supporting to advance: but not a man moved.’ (Diary, p. 79.)

The returns show that the total loss of the British cavalry was nine men on this day. Six belonged to the Hussars. The report states that one officer and eleven men of the French were taken prisoners (see Beamish, History of the K.G.L., i. p. 820). Wellington’s dispatch merely says, ‘The Hussars distinguished themselves in a charge, made under the command of Colonel Arentschildt.’

[171] No. 3 of that arm.

[172] Some French authorities, favourable to Masséna, assert that he was not responsible for the failure to occupy Coimbra, that Ney, on the 10th, had been told to send Marcognet’s brigade to support Montbrun, who said that he could not succeed without infantry help (Pelet, Notes sur la campagne de Portugal, p. 334). But Ney, it is said would not detach the brigade. This seems most improbable, for (1) Junot’s corps, which was in Ney’s rear and five miles nearer to Coimbra, would have been the natural source from which to seek for infantry supports for Montbrun, and (2) Masséna does not accuse Ney of this particular piece of disobedience in his report to Berthier of March 19, nor in the later one of March 22, when he is giving his reasons for superseding his colleague and sending him home to France. He simply says, in recounting his reasons for not seizing Coimbra, that Montbrun and the engineers reported ‘that the river was in flood, that the bridge had two arches broken, that the left bank was occupied by the forces of Trant and Silveira, and defended by cannon. It would have required several days to repair the bridge and to drive the Portuguese out of Coimbra; there was no pontoon train with the army, and not a single boat on the Mondego. In face of the danger of being attacked by Wellington’s whole force while the passage was in progress, he resolved to renounce it.’ The one battalion of infantry which was sent to Montbrun’s aid on the 12th came from Solignac’s division in Junot’s corps—as might have been expected.

[173] I spent two interesting hours at Redinha on September 29, 1910, going round the battle-ground, guided by Mr. Reynolds of Barreiro. The village is most irregularly built, and the way to the bridge not obvious, the streets being tortuous and narrow. The place is easy to defend, but not easy to get out of. A courteous denizen of Redinha, Mr. J. J. Leitão, presented me with an unexploded British shrapnel shell, which he had got out of the sand of the river-bed just above the bridge. Several more had been found on this spot; they must have been thrown by the pursuing British artillery at the French column hurrying over the bridge, and had fallen short, into the water. Each contained thirty-two balls, but the powder had decayed into an impalpable red dust. The shell that we got is now in the United Service Museum.

[174] See table of losses in [Appendix III]. Of the regiments the chief losers were the 95th (13 men), and 52nd (18 men).

[175] Of the fourteen French officers killed and wounded no less than thirteen were from the 25th Léger, and 27th and 50th Ligne of Mermet’s division.

[176] e. g. in Delagrave, p. 201: ‘Deux colonnes des siens remontaient le Mondégo, le long des rives: celle qui avait débarqué à Figuieras avait pour but principal de couvrir Coïmbre.... L’autre, qui remontait la rive gauche, avait été détachée de l’armée ennemie avec ordre de déborder et d’attaquer la droite des Français.’ Belmas also speaks of this imaginary force.

[177] Marbot says that the officer arrived four hours after the evacuation of Condeixa, though that place is only five miles from Fonte Cuberta (Mémoires, ii. 443). Fririon makes a much graver accusation against Ney, viz. that he sent no messenger at all, and that the allied cavalry were discovered by an officer named Girbault on Masséna’s staff.

[178] For an account of this curious affair see Fririon, Noël (who was with Loison at the moment), Pelet, and Marbot. The latter (as always) gives the most picturesque and probably the least trustworthy account. He forgets to mention that Fonte Cuberta was occupied by Loison’s 4,500 infantry, and writes as if a squadron of hussars had retired before Masséna’s escort of 50 men. According to him the Marshal’s night-retreat was much disturbed by the misadventures of his mistress (Renique’s sister), whose horse repeatedly fell in the dark and rolled over her, to his intense anxiety. Masséna’s dispatch says only, ‘Le duc d’Elchingen abandonna la position de Condeixa plus tôt que je ne le croyais. Le poste de Fonte Cuberta était découvert, et l’artillerie qui s’y trouvait compromise. J’ai gagné avec elle la grande route par une marche de flanc, à portée de canon de la ligne ennemie, par un beau clair de lune.’

[179] ‘Le Maréchal Masséna crut voir dans ce mouvement opéré à son insu l’intention de le faire tomber, lui et son état-major, entre les mains de l’ennemi. Le Général Fririon chercha à lui faire entendre qu’il devait attribuer ce fait à un oubli plutôt qu’à un sentiment de malveillance. Mais il lui fut impossible de le persuader. “Cette conduite est inexcusable,” lui dit Masséna; “le mouvement rétrograde de ces deux divisions était exécuté clandestinement; c’est un acte que rien ne peut justifier.”’ (Fririon, pp. 150-1.)

[180] For all this see Soriano da Luz, iii. pp. 360-1.

[181] According to Delagrave he got the news neither from Ney nor from an aide-de-camp of his own whom he had left with the 6th Corps to transmit information, but from an emissary of Masséna named Girod, who thought of him when the proper authorities failed to do so.

[182] Called the Deuça by Napier and other writers—an erroneous contraction of Rio de Eça.

[183] Late Champlemond’s, heavily engaged against Reynier at Bussaco.

[184] viz. Ashworth’s (late A. Campbell’s), Spry’s, Madden’s (late Eben’s), and Harvey’s, of which the third had only one regiment engaged at Bussaco, and the others had been on parts of the line not attacked by the French.

[185] I walked round Casal Novo on September 28, 1910. It is a very small place, under a low undulation of the high-lying plateau which the road crosses.

[186] There is a good account of the combat of Casal Novo in William Napier’s History, iii. 119-20, and a still more striking one in his biography, pp. 55-7, containing some distressing anecdotes. He was severely wounded, as was also his brother George Napier of the 52nd, whose narrative is quite as interesting as William’s. It is he who describes Erskine’s reckless action best—informed by Colonel Ross that the French were still in Casal Novo ‘he kept blustering and swearing it was all nonsense—that the captains of the pickets knew nothing about the matter, and that there was not a man in the village. Just as he spoke the dense fog began to clear, and bang came a shot from a twelve-pounder, which struck the head of our column and made a lane through it, killing and wounding many. Then came a regular cannonade, but the wise Sir William was sure it was but a single gun and a picket supporting it, and desired Colonel Ross to send my company against its flank,’ &c. Costello of the 95th has also left a very good and lively narrative of the day’s work.

[187] The losses of the 14th (Casal Novo) and the 15th (Foz do Arouce) have unfortunately got mixed in Martinien’s invaluable casualty lists, most of them being credited to the 14th, with the wrong heading ‘Condeixa’—which appears to mean Casal Novo. In some regiments the dates and names have not got wrong, e. g. we know that on the 14th the 27th regiment had 3 officers wounded, and 3 more at Foz do Arouce on the following day. But e. g. in the 39th Ligne Colonel Lamour is down as ‘blessé le 14 mars à Condeixa,’ while he was certainly wounded at Foz do Arouce on the 15th, where he was also taken prisoner. The total of officers recorded as hit in the 6th Corps on the 14th-15th is 22, of whom 10 were certainly casualties of the 14th. This must surely imply more than 55 in all, killed and wounded. At the low rate of 10 men per officer it would give 100—at the normal rate of 20 per officer it would be 200. But the last is probably too high. It was on this day that Marbot had his famous encounter with a rifle officer (officier de chasseurs à pied) and two hussars, of whom (according to his narrative) he slew the first and wounded the other two. It cannot be disputed that he had a fight, for he is down as wounded in the official lists. But he certainly did not kill a rifle officer. The only light division officer slain that day was Lieutenant Gifford, who was killed by a ball in the head at Casal Novo. It is also to be noted that there are no cavalry casualties in the return of March 14, or indeed since Redinha. Marbot’s supposed victims thus disappear!

[188] For details see the diary of Ney’s aide-de-camp Sprünglin (p. 470). It is astounding to find Masséna in his dispatch of March 19 to Berthier stating that between Miranda de Corvo and Foz do Arouce ‘nos équipages et nos malades ne cessaient pas de filer, et rien absolument n’est resté en arrière.’

[189] ‘The most disgusting sight was the asses floundering in the mud, some with throats half cut, the rest barbarously houghed. What the object of this was I never could guess. The poor brutes could have been of no use to us, for they could not have travelled another league. Their meagre appearance, with backbones and hips protruding through their skin, and their mangled limbs, produced a feeling of disgust and commiseration.’ (Grattan, p. 58.)

‘It was pitiable to see the poor creatures in this state, yet there was something ludicrous in the position which many had taken when thus cruelly lamed. They were sitting in groups upon their hinder ends, staring in each other’s faces, as if in deep consultation on some important subject.’ (Donaldson of the 94th, p. 106.)

[190] Napier calls the village Foz de Aronce, and this spelling of it (probably caused by an uncorrected printer’s error) has been perpetuated by every English writer on the War. Yet Wellington has it rightly spelt with the ‘u’ in his dispatch (vii. p. 370) as ‘Foz de Arouce.’ Masséna, in his, calls it Foz d’Arunce, which is incorrect. Delagrave, Fririon, and other French narrators follow him, sometimes with the variants Aronce or Arounce. There is no doubt that the name is spelt with a ‘u,’ and always has been, by the Portuguese.

[191] All Marchand’s division and a brigade of Mermet’s (25th Léger and 27th Ligne) remained behind. Only Labassée’s brigade of Mermet’s division crossed the water, with Loison’s division.

[192] I studied the ground at Foz do Arouce on September 28, 1910. The bridge is only four and a half yards broad, and 107 long. It was approached in 1811 by the road in a sharp turn, which has now been straightened out, so was far more difficult to cross than it is now. The gap between the hills in which the village lies is about 200 yards broad. The heights on the French left are much higher than those on their right.

[193] It was found in the river at low water and sent to London. The loss is mentioned in George Simmons’s diary under March 16. Wellington sent it home in July. (Dispatches, viii. p. 78.)

[194] So both Masséna’s dispatch, and Fririon, who was present with the brigade of which the 69th formed part. Marbot is wrong in saying that it was the 27th. All the narratives on the French side are very confused, and differ widely.

[195] Sprünglin says 400, Masséna, in his dispatch to Berthier, under 200, Marbot 150, Victoires et Conquêtes 400. Sprünglin, as Ney’s aide-de-camp, had the best chance of knowing. But Martinien’s lists, in which I can only find ten or twelve casualties among officers, suggest a smaller total, roughly perhaps 250.

[196] See Dispatches, vii. p. 366.

[197] There is a bitter letter from Pack of March 21st in his Memoirs concerning the ‘bad commissariat and worse medical establishment of an inefficient and penniless government which no officer can serve with pleasure or advantage,’ which quite bears out Wellington, Dispatches, vii. p. 371.

[198] Wellington had called Beresford up to him on May 9th, and the latter was present at Pombal and Redinha. He rode hastily back to pick up his forces, which were to form the Army of Estremadura, on the 16th and reached Thomar on the 17th March.

[199] Masséna to Berthier, from Maceira, March 19: ‘D’après les rapports, le général Hill [he means Beresford, who had been in charge of Hill’s former command since December] se portait avec sa division et un gros détachement de Portugais à travers les montagnes du haut Zézère, se dirigeant sur la rive gauche du Mondégo. Dès ce moment j’ai abandonné l’espoir de garder cette rive sans risquer une bataille.’ ... ‘Dans l’état actuel des choses et d’après les mouvements que l’ennemi peut faire sur mes flancs, par le Mondégo ou par les montagnes de Guarda, où s’est dirigé le corps de Hill, il est nécessaire de rapprocher l’armée de notre base d’opérations’ [i. e. to retreat into Spain].

[200] Wellington to Beresford. (Dispatches, vii. 375-6.)

[201] ‘Rien ne nous empêchait,’ says Masséna’s biographer Koch, ‘de passer à gué le Mondégo, et de nous rendre maîtres de la Sierra de Alcoba, d’où nous menacerions Coïmbre et toute la contrée comprise entre le Mondégo, le Duero et la mer.’ But there was a hindrance—or rather three hindrances—the Mondego was not fordable at the moment, and what was more important, the starving army could not have lived on the country-side north of the Mondego. Moreover the passage of the Mondego with a lively enemy at his heels would have been too dangerous for Masséna, who had already refused to accept such conditions on the day of Condeixa.

[202] From Masséna’s dispatch to Berthier, March 19.

[203] Diary of George Simmons of the 95th, p. 146.

[204] Napier says, ‘by an ingenious raft contrived by the staff-corps’ (iii. 126), but Tomkinson of the 16th Light Dragoons and Simmons speak of a wooden bridge.

[205] So the diary of Captain Stothert of the 3rd Guards, p. 250. He puts the crossing later in the afternoon than the French sources, but the whole 1st Division was across by dark. Several French critics (e. g. Delagrave) blame Reynier for not stopping the small force that first crossed.

[206] These movements are best given in Fririon’s diary: Sprünglin gives some help for the 6th Corps.

[207] Tomkinson’s diary, p. 87.

[208] Dispatches, vii. p. 375.

[209] Simmons’s diary, p. 148.

[210] Masséna to Berthier, from Maceira, March 19th.

[211] Fririon’s Campagne de Portugal, p. 176.

[212] According to Fririon’s diary the H.A. guns arrived in time to shell the rear battalion and kill one officer.

[213] Tomkinson, p. 87: ‘Every one talked loudly of Slade’s conduct through the day.’

[214] Simmons of the 95th, diary, p. 148.

[215] Tomkinson’s diary, p. 88.

[216] Ney remained quiet at Cortiço and Carapichina this day, but was only ten miles from Celorico, and so may be considered as part of the same body as the 8th Corps.

[217] Noël, Souvenirs militaires, p. 141.

[218] Grattan’s With the Connaught Rangers, 1809-13, p. 58.

[219] The student must he specially warned against Fririon’s figures for French losses. Though he was Masséna’s aide-de-camp, and wrote a quasi-official account of the whole retreat, his numbers are wholly untrustworthy. He states (p. 149) that the 6th Corps only lost 179 killed and wounded between March 1 and March 15. The actual losses were Pombal, 63; Redinha, 227; Casal Novo, at least 55; Foz do Arouce, at least 250 = 600. Similarly he states the loss at Sabugal at 250; the official casualty list sent in to the Marshal gives a total of 750. Fririon, from his position, must have seen, or at least could have seen, these figures.

[220] Dispatch to Berthier, from Maceira, of that date.

[221] Pelet’s Appendice sur la Guerre d’Espagne in Victoires et Conquêtes, 21, p. 336.

[222] Captured at Vittoria, they were long after given to Belfast University.

[223] All these interesting figures come from the diary of Colonel Noël, commanding the artillery of Clausel’s division; see his memoirs, pp. 137 and 146.

[224] See [p. 80].

[225] The three letters are all printed in full in Fririon’s Memoir, and the second of them in Belmas’s Pièces justificatives, p. 507.

[226] Ney’s aide-de-camp Sprünglin says in his diary (p. 474) that Ney hesitated for some time before rejecting the idea of a coup de main against Masséna, which was hotly urged upon him, and opines that it would have been successful and most popular with the army.

[227] Foy to Masséna, April 8, 1811: ‘J’ai dit à Sa Majesté que vous paraissiez être dans l’intention de porter votre quartier général à Guarda, mais que (ne pouvant pas vivre dans cette position) vous seriez probablement obligé de descendre jusqu’à Alcantara. Cette position a paru à l’Empereur propre à protéger également le midi et le nord de l’Espagne.’

Some parts of this interview of Foy with Napoleon, related in his usual vivid style, are too good to omit. ‘Did Masséna really intend to force the passage of the Tagus? He did? Well then, he would have destroyed his army if he had tried. But I was not worried about it; I knew he would never try to cross. Would Masséna pass the Tagus, he who in the Isle of Lobau [Wagram campaign of 1809] would not try to pass a mere brook! The moment you told me that he had returned from in front of Torres Vedras I knew that he would come back, and refuse to risk a general engagement.... Wellington is a cleverer man than Masséna: he kept his eye fixed on Claparéde’s division; if Claparéde had been brought forward, the English would have expected to be attacked, would have gone back into their Lines.... Portugal is too far off—I can’t go there myself. The business would take six months, and in that six months everything would be hung up in Europe,’ &c. See Foy’s Vie Militaire, pp. 139-40.

[228] Fririon, Campagne de Portugal, p. 175.

[229] For all this see Koch’s Vie de Masséna, pp. 413-20.

[230] This was a gross exaggeration, as it turned out that there was forty days’ food in hand. Masséna accused Drouet of drawing on the rations for his own 9th Corps to an inexcusable extent.

[231] Masséna to Berthier, March 31, from Alfayates.

[232] When Reynier marched from Coria to Guarda in September 1810, he had been obliged to make the vast circle Coria-Alfayates-Sabugal-Guarda, in order to avoid the miserable mountain roads.

[233] Both dispatches are dated from Santa Marinha, March 25th.

[234] Pack’s Portuguese were so exhausted and sickly that they were left behind for a rest, and to wait for more food, at Mangualde on the upper Mondego.

[235] ‘General Slade had been in Celorico the whole of yesterday,’ complains Tomkinson of the 16th, ‘and yet had not the least idea where the French had retired to.’ Diary, p. 89.

[236] Wellington to Henry Wellesley, March 27, from Gouvea.

[237] Napier (iii. 129) is wrong in saying that the movement was ‘Supported by the 1st, 5th, and 7th Divisions.’ These only reached Celorico that day, and were fifteen miles from the field. See Diary of Stothert of the Guards, p. 232. Napier was misled by the vague wording of Wellington’s dispatch to Lord Liverpool (vii. 425), from which it might be supposed that these divisions were up.

[238] The 3rd Division arrived some time before the 6th and the Light were in actual touch with the enemy.

Picton writes about this: ‘Masséna with full 20,000 men was on the heights, and in the city of Guarda, when I made my appearance at 9 in the morning, with three British and two Portuguese regiments.... He ought immediately to have attacked me, but allowed me to remain within 400 yards of his main body for about two hours, before the other columns came up. But of course their movements were alarming him, and decided him not to hazard an attack, the failure of which would have probably brought on the total discomfiture of his army.’ Letter in Robinson’s Life of Picton, vol. ii. pp. 3, 4.

[239] See Tomkinson’s Diary, p. 90.

[240] Wellington to Beresford, from Celorico, March 30: ‘Yesterday we manœuvred the French out of Guarda. Masséna was there, some say with his whole army, I think certainly with two corps: not a shot was fired.’ (Dispatches, vii. 412.) Same day to Charles Stuart: ‘They were much stronger than we: I had only three divisions on the hill.’ (Dispatches, vii. 418.)

[241] Napier’s statements (iii. 129) are quite borne out by Tomkinson’s Diary: ‘In the rear of Pega is an open plain of two miles which the enemy had to pass: as usual we looked at them for half an hour: then the guns were ordered up, and in place of firing at the main body could only get within range of their pickets ... we continued to follow, and, although they had no cavalry, our general was afraid to go into the plain to get the guns in range of the infantry: they of course got clear off.’ (Diary, p. 91.)

[242] As late as May 1 the regimental statistics show that the 3rd Dragoons had only 139 available horses, sick or sound, and the 10th Dragoons only 233, They had started the campaign with 563 and 535 respectively.

[243] We cannot say ‘four British battalions,’ for two of them were foreign corps, the Chasseurs Britanniques and the Brunswick Oels Light Infantry. The two line regiments were the 51st and 85th.

[244] 7th and 19th Line and 2nd Caçadores, forming Collins’s brigade.

[245] viz. 2/88th for 3rd Division, 2/52nd for Light Division, 1/36th for the 6th Division.

[246] Including Pack’s whole brigade.

[247] Details may be verified in Wellington, Supplementary Dispatches, xiii. p. 611.

[248] Wellington’s orders were to cross 2 miles at least above Sabugal. The actual crossing was only 1¼ miles above.

[249] This fact comes from a MS. note by Sir John Bell of the 52nd, in my possession. He writes: ‘Just as the 2nd Brigade changed its direction, the General, being at some distance, sent an order for it not to engage. But the staff officer who carried it, and Drummond, seeing how matters stood, took the liberty of forgetting the message, so that Beckwith should have the full benefit of the support at hand. No question was ever asked as to the non-delivery of the order.’

[250] This statement is made by Tomkinson in his diary on April 3, p. 94.

[251] Many details in this narrative of the combat of Sabugal will be found to differ from those given in earlier histories. I have been relying for the French movements largely on the life of General Merle, the officer who was in charge of most of the fighting, and had the best chance of giving a correct story. [Braquehay’s Le Général Merle, pp. 160-1.]

[252] See the tables of the French and British losses in [Appendix No. VI]. Fririon, as chief of the staff, must have seen and passed the French return giving 750 casualties, yet in his narrative allows for only 250, saying, ‘On a beaucoup exagéré les pertes: les chiffres que nous donnons sont très exacts.’ This is only one example of his habit of falsifying figures, in which he rivalled Masséna and Soult.

[253] In the Diary of Tomkinson of the 16th Light Dragoons there is a curious note as to the capture of a ‘caravan’ or large coach belonging to the head-quarter staff, and more especially to Masséna’s Portuguese adviser, the Marquis d’Alorna, on April 7th. Sixty-five infantry were captured by the regiment on the same day.

[254] See letters to Beresford of April 6th and to Charles Stuart of April 8th, in Dispatches, vii. pp. 430-5.

[255] Napier (iii. 135) says that the French lost 300 men, which contrasts strangely with the official numbers given by the French. Probably Drouet gave only the actual loss in action, while the British accounts speak of all the stragglers taken that day as if they had been captured in the fight. The 16th certainly got 65 prisoners from a convoy guard.

[256] Wellington, Dispatches, vii. p. 448.

[257] But, as he wrote to Beresford on April 14, ‘I was not very sanguine of the results of the blockade of that place, and had indeed determined not to make it in any strength: and now it is useless to keep anybody on the other side of the Agueda save for food and observation.’ (Dispatches, vii. 457.)

[258] For the state of semi-blockade in which Sanchez had kept Ciudad Rodrigo, see the Memoirs of the Duchess of Abrantes (vii. pp. 275-7), who was beleaguered there while her husband was in Portugal. For the hunts organized against him by Thiébault, see the latter’s Memoirs, iv. 449-51, &c. Sanchez intercepted numbers of dispatches which were of great use to Wellington, as they kept him informed of the state of the French in northern Spain.

[259] See vol. iii, Appendix, p. 543.

[260] When Foy went back from Thomar on March 5 to Rodrigo his escort was taken from the 9th Corps, not from the Army of Portugal, so does not count. See Pièces Justificatives, No. 45, in Foy’s Vie Militaire, p. 357.

[261] See pp. 167-8 of vol. iii.

[262] Dispatch printed in Fririon, p. 157.

[263] See above, pp. [24-5].

[264] Bessières to Berthier, printed in the Appendix to Belmas, vol. i. p. 562.

[265] See below, [p. 225]. Divisions Souham and Caffarelli.

[266] Bessières soon after his arrival put a garrison in Santoña, between Santander and Bilbao.

[267] See vol. iii. pp. 486-7.

[268] Correspondance, no. 17,785, 8th June, 1811.

[269] Since the disaster at Puebla de Senabria (vol. iii. p. 270) Serras had drawn in his left flank and abandoned the Galician foot-hills.

[270] The King in all his dispatches seems to understate his own force. He sometimes calls it only 15,000 men. But a muster roll of the Army of the Centre, which I have copied from the Archives de la Guerre, for February 15, 1811, shows a total of 20,000, viz. Dessolles, 3,300, German Division, 5,200, Spaniards, 4,200, Lahoussaye, 2,500, Treillard’s Light Cavalry, 1,400, Artillery Train, Sappers, &c., 1,500, Royal Guards, 2,000 of all arms. In addition there were 5,000 drafts for Soult detained in New Castile, but about to start for Seville.

[271] Which had only seven battalions, the rest being with Soult in Andalusia.

[272] Composed of two cavalry regiments of Marisy’s brigade, three German battalions from La Mancha, and two French battalions.

[273] Napoleon in a dispatch of 22 March (Correspondance, xxi. 496) blames Lahoussaye for not stopping in northern Estremadura, in touch with Soult.

[274] See Miot de Melito’s Mémoires, iii. 153-6.

[275] See vol. iii. pp. 506-7.

[276] See Miot’s Mémoires, iii. 160, for the discouraging results of this embassy.

[277] All this from the letter of the Queen of Spain, detailing her interview with the Duc de Cadore, who sent for her in the Emperor’s name on January 15, 1811, and administered this bitter message to her, for her husband’s benefit. See the letter given in Miot’s Mémoires, iii. 171-2. Cf. Napoleon’s dispatch to Laforest, ambassador at Madrid, Correspondance, 17,111.

[278] Miot’s Mémoires, iii. 176.

[279] Napoleon to Berthier, from Caen, May 27. Correspondance, no. 17,752.

[280] See Miot de Melito’s Mémoires, iii. 197-8, and compare it with the actual terms of Napoleon’s concession given in his letter to Berthier quoted above.

[281] All from the Caen memorandum for Berthier quoted above.

[282] For dispatches concerning this, and notes as to the troops and ships to be employed, see Correspondance, 17,824, 17,875, &c. The project seems to have been seriously thought over, the Emperor wrongly believing that England was stripped of regular troops.

[283] ‘Le Portugal est trop loin: je ne peux pas y aller; il faudrait six mois. Pendant six mois tout est suspendu: l’Europe est sans direction: les Russes peuvent se déclarer, les Anglais débarquer au nord. En vérité, quand on voit la différence qu’un homme met aux événements, il est impossible de ne pas avoir de l’amour propre.’ 30th March, 1811. Napoleon’s interview with Foy, reported by the latter in Vie Militaire du Général Foy, p. 140.

[284] For a similar hint of danger in 1809, see above, vol. i. pp. 560-61.

[285] Sometimes on absolutely false information, due to the Emperor’s vast distance from the theatre of war leading him to make hypotheses which had been falsified, because of the mistaken premises on which he grounded them. For example, on March 30, 1811, he told Berthier that Masséna’s head quarters were at Coimbra, and that a detachment of his army occupied Oporto, and these ‘news’ were to be sent on to Soult (Correspondance, 17,531). On that day Masséna was already behind the Coa on his retreat to Ciudad Rodrigo.

[286] Compare the dispatches of March 30, where it is demonstrated that Soult has nothing to fear for Badajoz, because Wellington cannot detach more than 15,000 men against it, and that of December 12, where it is demonstrated that Soult having 80,000 men should be ashamed of himself for allowing the ‘affront’ of Arroyo dos Molinos to be put upon him by Hill and 6,000 British.

[287] ‘Il ne faut pas se diviser: il faut réunir ses forces, présenter des masses imposantes: toutes les troupes qu’on laisse en arrière courent le risque d’être battues en détail, ou forcées d’abandonner les postes,’ &c. Napoleon to Soult, Correspondance, December 6, 1811.

[288] Napoleon to Berthier; orders for Bessières and Marmont of May 26, 1811.

[289] See Correspondance, 17,784, Napoleon to Clarke, 8th June, 1811. The divisions were composed as follows:—

Souham. 1st Line (4 batts.) and 62nd Line (4 batts.), from Turin and Marseilles; 23rd Léger (2 batts.), from Auxonne; 101st Line (4 batts.), from Turin and Spezzia. About 7,000 men.

Caffarelli. 5th Léger (2 batts.), from Cherbourg; 3rd and 105th Line (each 2 batts.), from Rennes; 10th Léger (4 batts.), from Rennes; 52nd Line (2 batts.), from Toulon. About 6,000 men.

Reille. 81st Line (2 batts. at Pampeluna, 1 from Genoa); 10th Line and 20th Line (4 batts. each), already at Pampeluna; 60th Line (4 batts.), from Toulon. About 7,500 men.

Italian Division. 1st Line (4 batts.); 7th Line (4 batts.). About 4,000 men.

[290] Correspondance, no. 16,910, of September 10, 1810.

[291] See vol. iii. p. 494.

[292] See vol. iii. p. 503.

[293] Napier’s ‘Tenaxas’ and Belmas’s ‘Tenailles’ = ‘the Pinchers.’

[294] The strength of the garrison raises a conflict of authorities. The Spanish official figures are those given above, which are followed by Schepeler and Arteche. But Suchet says that he captured 9,461 prisoners, including the wounded in the hospitals, and that several hundred men more had perished before the surrender. He gives a muster roll of the garrison purporting to bear out his figures (Mémoires, i. p. 359), which Belmas copies. Since Suchet’s Spanish totals are often more than doubtful (cf. vol. iii. p. 304) I accept the figures given by his adversaries. The December figures of the Spanish Army of Catalonia show 13,040 men in all distributed in garrisons, including those of Tarragona, Tortosa, Seu de Urgel, Cardona, and smaller places. I think that 7,000 for Tortosa is probable.

[295] See vol. ii. p. 6.

[296] This narrative of the fall of Tortosa is mainly derived from the sources given by Arteche, especially Yriarte’s narrative, and from Schepeler and Vacani. These in some details differ from Suchet’s story repeated by Belmas, though there is no fundamental discrepancy. But it is clear that Alacha was even more to blame than the French versions would give us to understand.

[297] Vacani, iv. 420-1.

[298] The figures of 400 killed and wounded given by Belmas seem very low, but are borne out by the invaluable lists in Martinien, who shows that only some thirty officers were killed or wounded at Tortosa, of whom twelve belonged to the engineers, artillery, and sappers. Thirty officers hit imply (at the usual rate of one to twenty men) 600 casualties, but it is very possible that there were no more than 400 and odd, for the engineer officers, of whom six were killed or hurt, ran special risks.

[299] For all this see Wimpffen’s reports printed in the Appendix to Suchet’s Mémoires, i. 359.

[300] His name was really Orsatelli, but he always appears in the reports as Eugenio.

[301] Vacani says only 266 (v. 26), including 3 officers killed and 13 wounded, but Martinien’s lists show 3 officers killed and 24 wounded; it is impossible that 27 officers should be hit and only 239 men—the proportion of 1 to 9 is incredible, and the loss must have been more like 600. Schepeler and the Spaniards put it at 1,200, which is too high.

[302] See vol. iii. p. 24.

[303] See below, [sect. xxviii. chap. i].

[304] Suchet, Mémoires, i. 266.

[305] The eleven battalions of Girard’s division, and from Gazan’s the 100th of the Line, and a battalion of the 21st Léger put in garrison at Badajoz.

[306] 26th Dragoons, 2nd and 10th Hussars, 21st Chasseurs à cheval, 4th Chasseurs Espagnols. Only the 10th Hussars and the 21st Chasseurs belonged to the 5th Corps.

[307] Nothing could be done in Estremadura without the 2nd Division, and D’Urban’s diary shows that the orders for the 2nd Division to march into the Alemtejo were only given on the 12th. Beresford’s chief of the staff notes on that day, ‘Orders to General Stewart [commanding 2nd Division] to fix his head quarters at Tramagal, to move the 13th to Crato or Carragueira [both in the Alemtejo south from Abrantes], and to let the troops remain as at present—unless it should become necessary to concentrate for the protection of the Bridge of Tancos.’ This shows that Wellington’s statement to Lord Liverpool on March 14th (Dispatches, vii. 360) that ‘troops had marched from Thomar on the 9th, and that part of Sir William Beresford’s division, which had not passed the Tagus, was put in motion, and that their head had arrived within three marches of Elvas,’ can apply at most to Hamilton’s Portuguese.

[308] Wellington to Lord Liverpool, March 14. Dispatches, vii. 360-1.

[309] See [p. 60] above.

[310] Cole actually reached Portalegre on the 22nd, so could have been in front of Badajoz on the 24th.

[311] Wellington to Beresford, March 18th (Dispatches, vii. 372), ‘You had better lose no time in moving up to Portalegre, and attack Soult, if you can, at Campo Mayor. I will come to you if I can, but if I cannot do not wait for me. Get Castaños to join you from Estremos with any Spanish troops he can bring. You must be two days marching from Portalegre to Campo Mayor, I believe.’

[312] Wellington to Beresford, March 20 (Dispatches, vii. 374-5); some details added from D’Urban’s diary, which do not appear in this dispatch.

[313] All these details are from D’Urban’s Journal.

[314] The consumption of the Estremos magazines by Mendizabal’s men will be found mentioned in the pamphlet (written under Beresford’s direction) called ‘Strictures on Napier’s Peninsular War’ [London, 1832]. ‘When the Marshal (Beresford) put his corps in motion from the Tagus he was informed that the British Commissary in the Alemtejo had from 200,000 to 300,000 rations in store for his use. But this officer had also been ordered to supply the Spanish division lately in that province, and (most incautiously) issued for its service whatever its commander required. Owing to this inadvertence on the part of the Commissary (whose name, I think, was Thompson), when Marshal Beresford arrived the store was absolutely empty’ [p. 61]. His name was Thompson, and he was immediately superseded by Wellington’s order (Dispatches, vii. 426).

[315] Soriano da Luz, iii. pp. 531-2.

[316] Colonel Dickson met Talaya only two days after the surrender and had an interesting interview with him. See Dickson’s Journal, i. p. 366. He can find no praise high enough for the old engineer officer. D’Urban also speaks of him in most appreciative terms.

[317] There is great difficulty in making out what were the French cavalry regiments, but Martinien’s lists show losses in the 26th Dragoons (eight officers) and 2nd Hussars, and Long speaks positively of the 10th Hussars as present also.

[318] D’Urban, reconnoitring with one, was sighted and chased a little way by French hussars. See C. E. Long’s vindication of his uncle, General Long’s Military Reputation [London, 1832], pp. 74-5.

[319] Belmas says that it had started déjà, and must be right: while Lapéne, who thinks that it was loaded up and sent off after the alarm, fails to account for its being six miles along the road when surprised. Heavy guns travel slowly. Beresford corroborates Belmas.

[320] This is Long’s account of the orders given by Beresford (p. 75 of the Vindication of the Military Reputation of the late General Long, by C. E. Long), in a letter from the general to General Le Marchant. This agrees pretty well with Beresford’s version of the facts, and is no doubt correct.

[321] A squadron was absent with Colborne’s column and another troop on distant reconnaissance work, and the regiment was not much over 200 sabres.

[322] Napier’s story that they charged through each other, formed up front to rear, and then charged each other again is strongly denied by Beresford as ‘purely supposititious’ (Strictures, pp. 152-3), and not confirmed by Long or any other eye-witness.

[323] See vol. i. p. 119.

[324] Belmas, iii. p. 557.

[325] So, at least, I gather from Long’s narrative: he says that ‘he sent an order for the advance of De Grey’s brigade’ (p. 34), and in another place (p. 53), that ‘it was only necessary to charge and throw into confusion the cavalry at their (the French) head and rear, and the object was accomplished.’ The object is defined as the ‘annihilation’ of the French column, which Long thinks would have surrendered.

[326] This regiment lost one officer and ten men killed, and thirty-two wounded, beside some prisoners, in the abortive advance. The French statement that the 2nd Hussars made ‘de belles charges’ is therefore evidently justified. But it was the flanking infantry fire which demoralized the Portuguese (Long’s Vindication, p. 49).

[327] By all accounts this was Baron Trip, a Dutch émigré officer, who was serving on Beresford’s staff. The statement was very astounding, even incredible, considering that the country was open and undulating. But it was almost equally incredible that the 13th and 7th Portuguese should have pursued the French dragoons completely out of sight, six miles away, without leaving a man behind.

[328] Colonel Gabriel, a staff officer of the 2nd Division, says that Colborne’s brigade was only 500 yards in rear of the heavy dragoons, and the French still in sight when Beresford ordered the final halt. See Long’s Vindication, p. 65.

[329] Except three wounded in the 3rd Dragoon Guards in skirmishes with the hussars of the French rearguard.

[330] One killed, six wounded, one prisoner. For names see Martinien’s lists and supplement thereto.

[331] Belmas says 175, but this is too low.

[332] Wellington to Beresford, from Celorico, March 28 (Dispatches, vii. 412). By an odd error Wellington wrote the 1st Portuguese, but it was the 7th which joined in the hunt.

[333] Napier censures Beresford for not crossing at Merida, thirty miles east of Badajoz. But (1) Wellington’s orders directed him to use Jerumenha; (2) to march to Merida would have been to pass across the front of an enemy who had a bridge-head at Badajoz, from which he could push out detachments to cut the line of communication, Campo Mayor to Merida; (3) Elvas was the only possible base, and the only place where magazines could be safely formed, or munitions, siege artillery, &c., procured; (4) the road Campo Mayor-Merida was very bad; (5) Merida was within reach of the French Army of the Centre, which had detachments at Truxillo and Almaraz.

[334] These notes as to Beresford’s difficulties are taken partly from the Journal of his chief of the staff, D’Urban, partly from the latter’s detailed report on the Estremaduran campaign, published in 1832, but written in 1811, partly from the Strictures on Napier’s History, vol. iii, written under Beresford’s eye. The latter might be considered suspicious if they were not completely borne out by the two former, as well as by Wellington’s Dispatches, vii. 414, 426, 432.

[335] This must have been Wellington’s Celorico dispatch of March 30, saying that ‘between chevalets (trestles), boats, Spanish and English pontoons, and a ford, I should hope that the Guadiana may be passed in safety’ (Dispatches, vii. 414.)

[336] D’Urban’s Narrative, p. 10.

[337] Beresford maintained that troops on the right bank could be protected by the fire of the guns of Jerumenha, which is in a lofty position, commanding the Spanish shore. But they would have been of little use if the French had attacked at night. (Strictures on Napier, p. 177.)

[338] Correspondance, xxi. 146: ‘Vous voyez que ce que j’avais prévu est arrivé, qu’on a eu la simplicité de laisser du monde dans Olivenza, et de faire prendre là 300 hommes,’ &c. This was alluding to an earlier order to Soult not to make small detachments, and to blow up Olivenza.

[339] Ninety-eight sick attended by sixteen surgeons were comprised in the surrender on April 15th.

[340] This is Lapéne’s view, who says that the 400 gallant men were knowingly sacrificed in this hope: ‘L’intérêt de l’armée a demandé le sacrifice’ (p. 146).

[341] Dickson’s Journals, recently published by Major Leslie, R.A., are the first and most important source in which to study the two early British sieges of Badajoz, as well as the smaller matter of Olivenza. I am using them perpetually all through the following pages.

[342] This date is that given by D’Urban’s Journal.

[343] Dispatches, vii. 407. From Gouvea, March 27.

[344] Dickson, in his Journal, p. 448, specially mentions this curious fact, and notes the name of Philip III and the dates 1620, 1636, 1646, 1652 on some of the guns he used.

[345] These were the companies of Bredin, Baynes, Raynsford, and Glubb; see vol. iii. p. 559.

[346] Dickson, Journal, pp. 405, 448.

[347] Long says that the 13th took about 150 prisoners (Vindication, p. 104), but the French accounts do not acknowledge anything like such loss.

[348] D’Urban visited Ballasteros’s camp on the 14th and settled with him all the details of a joint march against Maransin (whom they wrongly supposed to be d’Aremberg, not knowing that the latter had returned to Seville with the cavalry). ‘If d’Aremberg takes the bait, and follows Ballasteros, he must be lost altogether; even if he halts at Xeres we ought to get hold of him,’ writes D’Urban in his diary. But Maransin fled on the morning of the 15th.

[349] D’Urban’s diary under the 17th April.

[350] Dispatches, vii. 491-2.

[351] Not to be confused with another Burguillos on the Guadalquivir, north of Seville.

[352] Hoghton’s brigade of the 2nd Division, Myers’s and Harvey’s brigades of the 4th Division, Campbell’s brigade of Hamilton’s Portuguese division.

[353] So D’Urban’s diary under May 11th. The loss was over 400 men, of whom 207 were in the 40th, 118 in the 27th, 75 in the 97th, and 38 in the 17th Portuguese. The French lost about 200 men only.

[354] 3/27th, 1/40th, and 97th Foot.

[355] Wellington to Beresford, April 14th: ‘Sir William Erskine did not send a detachment across the Agueda in time, as I had desired him, and the consequence is that the French got their convoy into Ciudad Rodrigo yesterday morning.... It is useless now to keep anybody on the other side of the Agueda.’ Dispatches, vii. 467.

[356] Tomkinson’s (16th Light Dragoons) Diary, April 10th-11th (p. 98).

[357] 14th Light Dragoons and 1st Hussars K.G.L.

[358] See above, [p. 199].

[359] Sometimes called Pamplona’s brigade in Wellington’s dispatches of this date, Colonel Pamplona having been in temporary command during Ashworth’s absence.

[360] Barbaçena’s Portuguese on the lower Coa, below Almeida: the British 1st Royals and 16th Light Dragoons on the upper Coa.

[361] The very interesting dispatch in which Wellington’s forecast is stated is that to Castaños of April 15, written in French. ‘En pensant à ce qu’ils doivent faire dans leurs circonstances actuelles, je trouve que (1) ou ils feront l’invasion de la Galice avec le corps de Bessières, pendant que Masséna donnera du repos à ses troupes, dans les cantonnements occupés jusqu’à présent par Bessières: (2) ou ils se joindront, pour tomber sur mon corps sur la frontière de la Castille—ce qui n’est pas très vraisemblable: (3) ou ils ne feront rien jusqu’à ce que les troupes de Masséna soyent reposées et remises en état, quand ils rassembleront une grande armée dans l’Estrémadure.’ Dispatches, vii. p. 470.

[362] Bessières to Berthier, from Valladolid, June 6, 1811.

[363] It is possible that there is some diplomatic intention in the stress laid by Wellington on the likelihood of a French invasion of Galicia. He was writing to Castaños, and it was his object to get that general to stir up the Galicians. Hence, perhaps, he exaggerated a possibility which was not so strong as he stated.

[364] Memorandum for Berthier (Correspondance, 17,531), dated March 30. ‘Le quartier général de l’armée de Portugal reste à Coïmbre. Oporto est occupé par un détachement.... Le Prince d’Essling tiendra à Coïmbre, menaçant Lisbonne, qui sera attaquée après la récolte.’ At this moment Masséna’s army was just reaching the Spanish frontier, in its final retreat from Guarda!

[365] Correspondance, 17,591. ‘Vous ferez connaître au Prince d’Essling ... qu’il doit presser l’armament d’Almeida.... Il doit prendre des mesures pour couvrir Almeida et Ciudad Rodrigo, et d’un autre côté pour se mettre en communication avec Madrid et Séville.’

[366] Correspondance, 17,701.

[367] This we learn from Marmont’s letter to Berthier dated May 14, in which he says that the dispatch reached him only on May 10, and that its contents were unexpected. (Marmont’s Mémoires, iv. p. 78.)

[368] Correspondance, 17,591.

[369] ‘Le désir que l’armée a manifesté depuis longtemps d’aller se reposer ne me laisse aucun doute qu’il serait dangereux d’attendre l’ennemi pour recevoir bataille ou pour la lui donner.’

[370] All this, of course, is from the Great Memorandum of March 30, which Berthier was to communicate to all the chiefs of the Peninsular armies.

[371] For all this see section xxvi. pp. [279-81], on Beresford’s campaign in Estremadura.

[372] See above, [p. 294].

[373] That he did not purpose to be longer away is shown by the fact that he was already at Portalegre, on his return journey from Elvas, when Spencer’s final warning that Masséna was on the move reached him. Dispatches, vii. 50.

[374] See the three dispatches to Spencer on pp. 464-6, 473-4, and 475 of Dispatches, vii, dated respectively April 14, April 16, and April 17, 1811.

[375] For details see the Journal of George Simmons of the 95th (A British Rifleman), pp. 164-5.

[376] Wrongly dated April 20 by Sprünglin in his generally accurate diary (p. 477).

[377] Thiébault’s Mémoires, vol. iv. p. 448.

[378] The 6th Corps incorporated one battalion each of the 6th Léger, 25th Léger, and the 27th Ligne from Conroux’s division, and one each of the 39th, 59th, 69th, 76th from Claparéde’s. The 2nd Corps got a battalion of the 17th Léger only, besides drafts. Solignac’s division, nominally 6,110 bayonets, was short of two battalions (from the 15th and 65th), or 850 men, left in garrison at Ciudad Rodrigo. In the same garrison had been left the whole Régiment de Prusse (500 men), besides drafts. The junction of the isolated battalions from Drouet’s corps took place on April 27. (Fririon, p. 198.)

[379] It had sunk on May 1 from an original strength of 6,800 men to 3,073.

[380] For strange doings of this eccentric brigadier at Salamanca during the winter, see Thiébault, vol. iv. pp. 435-7.

[381] These figures, differing much from those supplied by Koch, are worked out from the return of May 1 in the Paris Archives Nationales. The total of cavalry mounted and available seems to have been 3,007, including Fournier. See tables in [Appendix XIX].

[382] Masséna to Berthier, April 30, 1811, from Ciudad Rodrigo. The returns show that on May 1 twelve batteries had been left behind with no horses at all, in order that the five remaining might take the field with 425 horses.

[383] Masséna to Berthier, April 17th, from Salamanca.

[384] So Marbot, ii. 457. If Marbot’s talents as a raconteur make his authority doubtful, we may point out that Thiébault, the governor of Salamanca, tells much the same story in his Mémoires, iv. p. 478.

[385] Berthier to Bessières, May 19, 1811.

[386] Infantry. 2nd Corps, 10,292; 6th Corps, 16,816; 8th Corps (1 division), 4,714; 9th Corps, 10,304; total, 42,126. Cavalry. Masséna’s own, 3,007; Bessières, 1,665; Artillery, Sappers, Train, &c., 1,400; total, 48,198. Masséna would only acknowledge 35,000 men, and put Wellington’s force (which was, as we shall see, 37,000 men) at about 50,000. If Wellington had possessed 50,000 men, Fuentes de Oñoro would have been a very different sort of battle.

[387] Masséna’s arrival was known, through deserters, the day after it occurred. Diary of Simmons of the 95th, p. 166.

[388] Complaints on this score fill up great parts of Wellington’s letters of the 30th April and 1st May (Dispatches, vii. 511-12, 516-17). They seem slightly to overstate the deficiency, compared with morning states of May 1; but this comes from his persistent habit of counting only rank and file, omitting officers and sergeants. When he says that the total infantry (including Pack) was only 11,000, while it works out to over 12,000 when that detached brigade is counted, we must remember that he is not reckoning anything but rank and file. Wellington attributes most of the loss to (1) slackness at the depositos (dépôts) in forwarding drafts, (2) maladministration of the hospitals, (3) insufficient food at the front for those brigades still fed by the Portuguese government, and not taken on to the British establishment.

[389] Not to speak of the bridge of Sabugal, six miles above the Ponte Sequeiro and hopelessly out on the flank.

[390] viz. the light companies of 17 British and 4 Portuguese battalions, plus 4 companies of the 5/60th, 1 of the 3/95th, and 2 extra light companies of the K.G.L. attached to Löwe’s brigade.

[391] Both Napier (iii. p. 150) and Tomkinson (p. 100) say that the British cavalry, nominally 1,520 sabres, had only about 1,000 in line that day, owing to details, orderlies, &c., absent from the ranks. This is probably an over-great deduction.

[392] See tables at end, [Appendix IX]. 1st Division, 7,565 men; 3rd Division, 5,480 men; 7th Division, 4,600 men; Light Division, 3,815 men; Ashworth’s Portuguese, 2,539 men, or 23,999.

[393] The statement made by several French authors that Masséna did not order Ferey to attack Fuentes on the 3rd, and that Loison and Ferey acted without orders, is directly contradicted by the Marshal’s own dispatch, in which he takes all responsibility: ‘J’espérais enlever Fuentes et m’y maintenir; je le fis attaquer, et il fut bientôt occupé.’

[394] But some in Marchand’s, which must have been fairly heavily engaged, judging from the casualty list of officers in Martinien.

[395] For an excellent account of the first day’s fighting in Fuentes village, see the diary of ‘J. S.’ of the 71st in Constable’s Memorials of the late War, i. 87-9. The regiment charged right up the French slope after recovering the place, and was attacked ineffectually by cavalry. Marbot (ii. p. 459) has a story that the second attack of the French would have succeeded if the Hanoverian Legion, in its red coats, had not been fired into from the rear in mistake by the 66th Ligne, which took them for British.

[396] Masséna, in his dispatch describing the battle, says that on the morning of the 4th the Allies made a serious attempt to turn Ferey out of the houses beyond the brook which he occupied. But we have no trace of any regular fighting in any of the British narratives; there was certainly some bickering across the brook, but apparently nothing more.

[397] See his Orders for the day, in [Appendix XIII].

[398] 85th and 2nd Caçadores.

[399] 51st and 85th, the other regiments being foreign (Chasseurs Britanniques and Brunswick Oels) or Portuguese.

[400] Its position, from this point of view, might be compared to that of Pakenham and the 3rd Division at Salamanca.

[401] The accusation against Montbrun, made by Napier and several French writers, of having waited for two hours after dawn, and then of having suffered himself to be delayed for another hour by the pursuit of a mere Spanish irregular band, is clearly groundless. We have the diaries of two officers of the squadrons of the 14th (Major Brotherton and Cornet F. Hall) who prove that the attack was made in the dusk of early dawn. ‘Just at daybreak,’ says the former, ‘I requested Don Julian to show me where his pickets were placed. He pointed out to me what he said was one of them, but I observed to him that in the dusk of morning it looked too large for a picket. The sun rising rapidly dispelled the fog, and the illusion at the same time, for Don Julian’s picket proved to be a whole French regiment dismounted. They now mounted immediately and advanced against us.’ (See the Diary in Hamilton’s History of the 14th Hussars.)

[402] Captain Belli, who had joined the regiment from England only the night before. A sergeant and six men were killed in trying to rescue him. See Tomkinson’s diary, p. 101. This officer of the 16th accuses Major Meyer of the Hussars of having lost the right moment for a charge by indecision. But the K.G.L. narratives (see Schwertfeger) show that Meyer fought hard, and was an enterprising officer.

[403] 1st Division in four brigades on the right; then Ashworth; then the 3rd Division next to Fuentes village.

[404] Along which the modern railway line is conducted from Villar Formoso to Ciudad Rodrigo. Fuentes de Oñoro station is a mile from the village, and only a few hundred yards from the Portuguese customs-station of Villar Formoso.

[405] 51st Foot, Chasseurs Britanniques, the incomplete battalion of Brunswick Oels (short of two companies detached), and the 7th and 19th Portuguese, commanded on this day by Doyle, colonel of the 19th.

[406] Unpublished Diary of Hall of the 14th Light Dragoons.

[407] See Journal of Wheeler of the 51st, pp. 13-14.

[408] The 51st lost 6 men; Brunswick Oels, 18; Chasseurs Britanniques, 58; 7th Portuguese, 8 men; 19th, 2 men—of these 92 only 19 were prisoners, so that it is clear that the French cavalry never got in among them, or cut them up in the style described by Pelet, Fournier, Fririon, or Masséna himself. When a body of 4,000 infantry attacked by cavalry has only 90 casualties, we know that no part of it can have been ridden over or seriously broken.

[409] Leach (of the 95th), Life of an Old Soldier, p. 214.

[410] By some error Napier says the 8th Corps, but the only division of that corps present (Solignac) was in reserve far off.

[411] Napier, iii. 152.

[412] See Brotherton’s Memoir, in Hamilton’s History of the 14th Light Dragoons, pp. 84-5: ‘At Fuentes d’Oñoro we had a very fine fellow, Captain Knipe, killed through his gallant obstinacy, if I may so call it. We had, the night before, been discussing the best mode for cavalry to attack batteries in the open field. He maintained, contrary to us all, that they ought to be charged in front, instead of by gaining their flank and avoiding their fire. The experiment next day was fatal to him. He had the opportunity of charging a French battery, which he did by attacking immediately in front. Their discharge of round shot he got through with little loss, but they most rapidly reloaded with grape, and his party got a close and murderous discharge, which almost entirely destroyed it—he himself receiving a grape shot through the body.’ As Montbrun had not got up his guns during the first cavalry charges, this must have been during Craufurd’s fight.

[413] Napier makes two serious errors—he represents Ramsay as having a whole battery, instead of two guns only: and he underrates the assistance given by the cavalry, which is detailed in Brotherton’s memoir, as well as in the regimental history of the Royals (p. 118).

[414] The account of this in Wellington’s dispatch is hopelessly obscure, because instead of writing ‘the pickets of the 1st Division under Lieut.-Col. Hill,’ he wrote by a slip of the pen ‘the regiments of the 1st Division under Lieut.-Col. Hill.’ Hill of course (being a regimental major though a titular Lieut.-Colonel, after the Guards system) did not command whole regiments, as Wellington’s words imply, but simply the skirmishing line of pickets. The facts are made quite clear by Stepney of the Coldstreams and Stothert’s diary (who calls them ‘the pickets of the Guards’), Grattan (who calls them ‘the advance,’ or ‘the light troops of the 1st Division’), and Hall’s unpublished diary, which gives the whole story in a nutshell: ‘The enemy made a dart at the pickets of the 1st Division, with the expectation of sweeping off the line before our cavalry could support them. They succeeded in part, by coming up unexpectedly, but when they were perceived the men, by collecting into knots (or ‘hiving’ as they called it) repulsed them with the bayonet. A troop of the 14th Light Dragoons and some of the Royals were ordered out to the skirmish and suffered some loss.’

It is this incident which General Fournier, who led the charge, transforms in his dispatch (in the Archives de la Guerre) into the breaking two squares of the Light Division and taking General Craufurd prisoner—a wild story. Fririon makes the charge capture ‘300 Hussars of the English Royal Guard!’ Both say that three battalions of the Guards laid down their arms.

[415] Deducting the regiments in Fuentes de Oñoro (71st and 79th) the 1st Division lost about 400 men in the whole day, of whom probably 100 in this petty disaster.

[416] One was repelled by the 42nd, which met it in line.

[417] Of this episode, only hinted at by Fririon, and not mentioned at all by Masséna in his official dispatch, we have a vivid description in Marbot, which might be doubted if it were not borne out by hints in Napier and Thiébault and by the direct statement of Marshal Jourdan in his memoirs. If Lepic had charged, it is hard to see what effect he could have produced, for all Peninsular experience went to prove that infantry in battle order on a good position could not be broken by cavalry, however daring. The 1st and 3rd Divisions were well established on their ground, with a steep slope below them, and could not have been moved. Lepic’s refusal to charge, however, always takes a prominent part in the description of Fuentes de Oñoro by French writers, not eye-witnesses, who are anxious to prove that Wellington ought to have lost the battle.

[418] To Lord Liverpool, 8th May. Dispatches, vii. p. 531.

[419] 2/24th and 1/79th from Nightingale’s brigade, and the 1/71st from Howard’s, in all 1,850 bayonets, leaving the remainder of the 1st Division with 5,700 bayonets, the 3rd Division with 5,400, and Ashworth with 2,500 as the main line holding the plateau, with 3,700 of Craufurd’s Light Division in reserve.

[420] Masséna’s dispatch, see [Appendix, no. XIII]. Drouet is therefore wrongly blamed by French critics who say that he attacked an hour or two late—he had to wait to see the turning movement in successful progress.

[421] British narratives persistently state that infantry of the Imperial Guard fought in Fuentes village. But it is absolutely certain that there were none of those troops with Masséna’s army. The explanation lies in the fact that the grenadier company in a French regiment wore bearskins, and that a mass of grenadier companies therefore could easily be mistaken for Guards. All 71st and 79th diaries speak of fighting with ‘the Imperial Guards’ for this reason.

[422] Masséna’s dispatch speaks only of Claparéde’s division as being put in, but as Martinien’s lists show, Conroux must have been still more heavily engaged, for his division lost 31 officers killed and wounded, Claparéde’s only 25. Moreover, it was one of Conroux’s battalions (9th Léger) with which the 88th were engaged mainly, and this battalion alone lost 8 officers. About three battalions of each division remained in reserve and had few or no casualties, viz. the 64th, 88th, 95th, 96th, 100th, 103rd of the Line.

[423] Grattan of the 88th; see his Adventures, &c., pp. 66-7.

[424] This again from Grattan, who tells how his colonel, Wallace of Bussaco fame, said that he would rather have to retake Fuentes than to cover a retreat to the Coa.

[425] It is unfortunately impossible to disentangle the losses of the various battalions of the 9th Corps, as there is no regimental return, but only a corps return of its losses available. But some aid is given by Martinien’s invaluable Liste des officiers tués et blessés pendant les Guerres de l’Empire, which shows that the battalions that suffered most were the 4/9th Léger with 8 officers hurt out of 21 present, the 4/63rd Ligne with 7 out of 19, the 4/24th Ligne and 4/28th Léger, each with 6 out of 17, and the 4/16th Léger with 6 out of 16. These, clearly, were the units that were most engaged. Some belonged to Conroux’s, some to Claparéde’s division.

[426] Six guns of the cavalry, fourteen of the 6th Corps, four of the 8th Corps.

[427] Bull’s horse artillery troop, Thompson’s and Lawson’s companies, and three Portuguese batteries, those of Sequeira, Rosado, and Preto.

[428] Fririon notes that they suffered more than was necessary from being in dense masses (p. 207). These two divisions had on the 3rd and 5th May 14 officers killed and 38 wounded, according to Martinien’s lists. As the total loss of the corps on both days was 59 officers and nearly 900 men, and we have to allow for Ferey’s loss of 400 men in Fuentes village, it seems that Marchand and Mermet must have lost at least as many more.

[429] Masséna to Napoleon, Fuentes de Oñoro, May 7: the main battle-report.

[430] Save the few voltigeur companies from Mermet sent down to skirmish with the 95th rifles in the ravine of the Turon, as mentioned just above.

[431] Pelet, Appendice sur la Guerre d’Espagne, p. 341.

[432] Masséna’s orders (Archives de la Guerre) were that Reynier ‘fera pour seconder l’attaque de l’armée une démonstration générale sur la ligne, et suivra l’ennemi dans tous ses mouvements—c’est-à-dire que si les forces qu’il a devant lui se porteraient au secours du gros de l’armée ennemie, qui est dans la direction de Fuentes d’Oñoro, il les suivrait dans sa marche, pour les prendre par la gauche.’

[433] See Rogerson’s regimental history of the 53rd, p. 58.

[434] The 8th Caçadores, according to Wellington’s dispatch, partly crossed the ravine and fought on the other side. Note that he calls them the ‘2nd battalion Lusitanian Legion,’ though that had now ceased to be their official designation.

[435] Marchand’s division shows in Martinien’s lists surprisingly heavy casualties, considering that it was but partially engaged on the 3rd in support of Ferey, and on the 5th was only actively employed in storming Pozo Bello. It had 13 officers killed and 31 wounded, which ought to imply at least 600 or 700 casualties among the rank and file. Apparently there was a disproportionate loss in officers, as the whole casualties of the 6th Corps on May 5 were only 944 men, of whom at least 400 were in Ferey’s division.

[436] Only 9 hurt in the 43rd, 21 in the 52nd, 13 in the Rifles, 24 in the two Caçador battalions. And many of these were undoubtedly lost in skirmishing, not in the retreat in squares.

[437] The blockade of Almeida and the siege of Badajoz by Beresford.

[438] Dispatches, vii. 515.

[439] See [p. 298] above.

[440] Both by Napier, iii. 152, and by Fririon, p. 207.

[441] See his dispatch in the Appendix to Belmas, i. p. 539.

[442] Moreover, Marchand’s leading brigade, that of Maucune, must have been in great disorder, after having driven the British advanced guard out of the woods and the village, and would need time to re-form.

[443] Pelet thinks that ‘l’excessive supériorité du général anglais lui donnait le moyen de tout entreprendre. Il s’est montré, dans cette campagne, et même ailleurs, fort étranger à la stratégie comme à la tactique.’ He concludes that Wellington with his superior numbers should have attacked the French centre or Reynier! He was ‘plus fort des deux cinquièmes que les Français.’ (Appendice sur la Guerre d’Espagne, pp. 340-2.) Fririon states as an incontestable fact that the French cavalry was inferior to the English in numbers (Journal historique de la Campagne de Portugal, p. 207). Marbot, on the other hand, thinks that Wellington was over rash in fighting at all on such a position (Mémoires, ii. 460), coming to much the same conclusion as Napier. Belmas’s arguments, like those of Pelet, are all vitiated by his giving Wellington 45,000 men—9,000 more than he actually possessed. Delagrave thinks, like Pelet, that Wellington showed ‘timidity which passed into cowardice.’ Yet he allows that Masséna had 41,000 infantry and cavalry, without counting gunners or sappers, and Wellington only 40,000 (p. 239).

[444] Wellington says (to Lord Liverpool, May 15): ‘Sir W. Erskine was dining with Sir Brent Spencer at head quarters, and received his orders about 4 o’clock. He says that he sent them off forthwith to the 4th regiment, which was stationed between Aldea de Obispo and Barba del Puerco.... The 4th regiment, it is said, did not receive their orders before midnight, and, though they had only 2½ miles to march, missed the road, and did not arrive at Barba del Puerco till after the French.’ (Dispatches, vii. 566.) Tomkinson’s contemporary comment on this is (pp. 102-3 of his diary): ‘The order reached Sir W. Erskine’s quarters about 2 p.m.: he put it in his pocket, and did not dispatch the letter to Colonel Bevan before midnight, and to cover himself, when required to explain by Lord Wellington, said that the 4th unfortunately missed its way, which was not the case.’ Many years later (1836) in his Conversations with Lord Stanhope (which see, p. 89) Wellington said that he believed Bevan had his orders ‘about four or five in the afternoon, but the people about him said “Oh! you need not march till daybreak,” and so by his fault the French got to Barba del Puerco.’ Napier (History, iii. p. 156) says plainly that ‘Erskine sent no order to the 4th regiment.’ Colonel Bevan always maintained that he got nothing from Erskine till nearly midnight.

[445] Marbot’s well-known narrative of this disaster (ii. 473) errs in exaggerating the numbers, but Reynier’s dispatch shows that there was a solid foundation for what might otherwise have appeared a rather lurid picture.

[446] Colonel Iremonger to Campbell, printed in History of the 2nd Regt., vol. iii. p. 190.

[447] Wellington to Lord Liverpool, vii. p. 566.

[448] Supplementary Dispatches, vii. p. 123.

[449] Counting the 4th Division, which was hardly, however, part of the ‘blockading force.’

[450] For statements showing that every one believed Erskine to be the responsible person see Stepney, p. 105: ‘instead of promulgating the orders the general, it is said, put them in his pocket and forgot them.’ George Simmons (p. 174): ‘Bevan was too late owing to Sir W. Erskine, by accident, not sending him an order in time.’ Charles Napier (Diary, p. 173), ‘It is said that Sir Wm. Erskine is to blame, and next to him General Campbell.’

[451] See Foy’s Vie Militaire, p. 114, and Appendix no. 49.

[452] See pp. [295-6] above.

[453] ‘Son tapis chargé de pâtés et d’autres pièces froides très belles, servis sur des plats d’argent, était entouré d’assiettes, de gobelets, de couverts du même métal. On dîna debout—ce qui ne suffit pas pour donner à ce repas de luxe un caractère suffisamment militaire.’ Thiébault, iv. p. 514.

[454] Parquin, who served for some time in his escort squadron, calls him ‘très aimé pour les soins qu’il prenait du soldat’ (Mémoires, p. 298), and rather admires him for having nothing but silver plate with him when on campaign.

[455] Foy’s Vie Militaire, p. 171.

[456] Ibid., p. 177, note (1).

[457] But, for reasons unknown, the 17th Léger, from the original division of Heudelet, changed places with the 26th Line from Loison’s old division, and went into the new 6th Division.

[458] Marmont to Berthier, May 14, from Salamanca.

[459] Memorandum from Berthier of March 30.

[460] Which belonged to the 5th Corps, and joined it before Soult concentrated at Seville.

[461] Including Alten’s brigade, added later.

[462] The force under Beresford comprised (figures of March): British—2nd Division, 5,500; 4th Division, 4,200; Alten’s brigade, 1,100; Cavalry, 1,200; Artillery, &c., 500. Total, 12,500. Portuguese—Hamilton’s division, 5,000; Harvey’s brigade of the 4th Division, 2,900; Collins’s brigade (an extemporized unit of which more anon) 1,400; Otway’s and Madden’s cavalry, 1,000; Artillery, 250. Total, 10,550. The whole, therefore, was about 23,000 instead of the 16,000 on which Napoleon calculated. At Albuera there were absent from the above one British brigade (Kemmis of the 4th Division) and one Portuguese cavalry brigade (Madden), nearly 2,000 men in all. Yet Beresford put 20,000 Anglo-Portuguese in line.

[463] viz. 16th Léger (3 batts.), grenadiers réunis (1 batt.), 4th and 14th Dragoons. The 2nd Hussars and 26th Dragoons were already with Latour-Maubourg, never having returned to the 1st Corps since January. The grenadiers réunis were formed of the six grenadier companies of the 45th, 63rd, and 95th of the Line.

[464] viz. 58th Ligne (3 batts.), one battalion of grenadiers réunis (Poles), 1st Lancers of the Vistula, 20th Dragoons, and 27th Chasseurs.

[465] viz. 12th Léger, 51st and 55th Line (3 batts. each), 17th and 27th Dragoons.

[466] Godinot had the 16th Léger and 51st Line, Werlé the 55th, 58th Line, and 12th Léger. The two grenadier battalions made a general reserve of 1,000 men.

[467] N.B.—For further details as to the composition of Soult’s army see [Appendix XVI].

[468] I cannot find any proper account of these ‘compagnies helvétiques’ who were not part of the organized Swiss troops in French service. But they are several times mentioned in narratives of 1811. See for example Lapéne, p. 238. Presumably they were in King Joseph’s service.

[469] For details of the allocution to the officers ‘rangés en cercle,’ see Lapéne, p. 145.

[470] I cannot exactly make out on what day Madden’s weak cavalry brigade (4 squadrons 5th and 8th Portuguese) joined Beresford. It was not with him at Campo Mayor on March 25th, but was up by April 10. Probably it joined before April 1st, as it had been at Elvas since the battle of the Gebora.

[471] For these movements the best authority is Long’s journal, on pp. 109-11 of C. B. Long’s Vindication of his relative.

[472] D’Urban in his narrative points out seven, but four of these were practically impossible.

[473] This brigade, which appears for the Albuera campaign, was composed of the 5th Line (2 batts.) from the garrison of Elvas, joined by the 5th Caçadores, a detached light battalion which had been serving with the cavalry south of the Tagus since last November (see vol. iii. p. 557). This temporary brigade must not be confused with other units headed by Collins before and after.

[474] In a private letter to Sir H. Taylor, D’Urban uses even stronger language: ‘Our cavalry instead of retiring leisurely, had fallen back (indeed I may say fled) rapidly before the advanced guard of the enemy. The left bank of the Albuera was given up without the slightest attempt at dispute. This error on the part of the officer commanding the cavalry was so completely of a piece with his conduct upon more than one previous occasion, that it became imperatively necessary to relieve him.’ (D’Urban MSS.)

[475] This account of the Albuera position was written on the spot, and involved a good deal of walking on a blazing April day. See [note] at end of the chapter.

[476] Either Napier never saw the ground of Albuera (as Beresford suggests in the Strictures on Napier’s History, p. 207) or else he had forgotten it. The only good plan available was D’Urban’s, and this Napier used (a copy of it is among his portfolio of maps in the Bodleian Library), memory or hypothesis exaggerating into hills and ravines the very gentle ups and downs shown on the map.

[477] Strictures on Napier’s History, vol. iii. pp. 233-4.

[478] Who took over Lumley’s brigade when the latter was promoted to command the cavalry that morning.

[479] The remainder of Murillo’s division of 3,000 men, which formed the infantry of the 5th Army, was at Merida, save one battalion in garrison at Olivenza.

[480] In his dispatch to Berthier, written before leaving Seville, he spoke confidently of cutting in ahead of Blake, and surmised that the latter would find himself in a very compromising position, when he arrived in southern Estremadura, on learning that Beresford had already been driven across the Guadiana. On the 15th spies brought him the statement that Blake was timed to join Beresford only on the 17th. His battle-dispatch distinctly says that his first news of the junction having already taken place was got from prisoners during the course of the action.

[481] The battery was that of Captain Arriaga.

[482] The difference in strength was caused by the fact that two brigades had contributed two, and one other brigade one, battalion each to the garrison of Badajoz.

[483] Those at the War Ministry, not the Archives Nationales.

[484] Beresford suggests that Colborne asked Stewart to allow him to put the right wing of the Buffs into square or column, so as to protect the flank of the brigade, but that Stewart refused. Colborne’s short letter on the battle does not say so; but as he was on very friendly terms with Stewart, he may have refrained from writing the fact. He only says that the order of attack adopted was not his, and that he had no responsibility for it. See Beresford’s Further Strictures on Napier, vol. iii. p. 159.

[485] I published Major Brooke’s diary in Blackwood for 1908, with an account of his almost miraculous subsequent escape from Seville, under the title of ‘A Prisoner of Albuera.’

[486] See History of the 66th Regiment in Cannon’s Series.

[487] Napier is quite wrong in saying that this small diversion was successful, iii. 167. The prisoners were Captains Phillips and Spedding.

[488] The writer of the Strictures on Napier’s History, vol. iii, gives as an eye-witness the following anecdote: ‘As a Spanish soldier in the ranks close to the Marshal was looking to the rear, a Spanish-Irish officer in that service cried to him, “To-day is not the day to fly, when you are fighting as the comrades of the British.” The poor fellow replied, “No, señor, mas los Ingleses nos tiraron por atrás.”’ The Spanish never at any moment fired into the British, as Napier asserts. The mistake was remedied by Beresford’s aide-de-camp Arbuthnot, who rode, at great risk, along the front of the 29th, and stopped their fire.

[489] It was here that the 57th earned the well-known nickname of the Die-hards, from their splendid answer to Colonel Inglis’s adjuration.

[490] This was an Anglo-Swiss officer, Major Roverea, whose memoirs have lately been published.

[491] It appears that the three stray companies from Kemmis’s absent brigade which had reached the field, were put into the square at the right flank also.

[492] What exactly passed between Cole and Hardinge is thoroughly worked out by the correspondence between them printed in the United Service Journal for 1841.

[493] Quoted in the Cole-Hardinge correspondence in the United Service Journal for 1841.

[494] Of which no less than 171 were in the battalion of the Lusitanian Legion which formed Cole’s flank-guard on the left: it suffered terribly from artillery fire.

[495] See [Appendix XVI].

[496] For details see [Appendix XVI].

[497] D’Urban in his diary under the 17th first speaks of an attack by Soult being possible, and then concludes it impossible; Kemmis’s arrival he thinks will have cured the Marshal of any idea of returning to the fight.

[498] His intention to come appears in his letter to Beresford of May 13th, received May 17th. The statement that the 3rd Division and other troops had actually started for Estremadura is in his letter of May 14th, received May 18th. Wellington Dispatches, vii. 549 and 555.

[499] Of whom more than 200 escaped, and joined their regiments during the next four days, for their guards were too exhausted to keep good watch.

[500] If any one wants an example of such a battle, he may take the first great fight of Frederick the Great, who had been driven ten miles off the battlefield with the wreck of his cavalry when news came to him that his infantry, in his absence and without his leadership, had won the battle for him.

[501] Peninsular War, iii. p. 175.

[502] Such as the statement that Zayas had given way before Colborne arrived at the front, which the evidence of Beresford himself, D’Urban, Schepeler, Moyle Sherer, and many other witnesses proves to be quite wrong. Also the tale (p. 167) that the Spaniards fired into the British (see Strictures, pp. 247-8, and Schepeler). Also the statement that Lumley’s cavalry diversion to help Colborne was successful—when it merely resulted in the repulse of the two squadrons that made it, with the loss of their two commanding officers (Captains Spedding and Phillips) taken prisoners.

An astonishing bit of arithmetic is the note (iii. p. 181) that on the night of the battle only 1,800 unwounded British infantry were left standing—the real figures being: Abercrombie, 1,200; Alten, 1,100; remains of Myers’s brigade, 1,000; remains of Colborne’s brigade, 600; ditto of Hoghton’s, 600. Total, 4,500. Napier had apparently forgotten Abercrombie and Alten.

[503] Strictures, p. 243.

[504] See [p. 388] above.

[505] See pp. [280-1].

[506] To Lord Liverpool, May 23.

[507] To Beresford, May 14. The 30,000 total allows for Spencer and four divisions being left in the North.

[508] To Lord Liverpool, May 24.

[509] To Lord Liverpool, May 23.

[510] Apparently on April 10, according to Schwertfeger’s History of the German Legion, i. 329.

[511] He outrode his own estimate, since according to a letter to Charles Stuart (Dispatches, vii. 572) he had intended not to reach Elvas till the 21st, ‘unless I see reason on the road to go a little quicker.’

[512] Memorandum for Spencer, dated May 15th, the night before Wellington’s departure. Dispatches, vii. p. 567.

[513] To Spencer, May 24. Dispatches, vii. p. 602.

[514] This is mentioned by Wellington himself (Stanhope’s Conversations, p. 90): ‘He could not stand the slaughter about him and the vast responsibility: the letter was quite in a desponding tone. It was brought me by Arbuthnot while I was at dinner at Elvas, and I said, “This won’t do: write me down a victory.” So the dispatch was altered accordingly.’

[515] Wellington to Beresford, May 19, 4.30 p.m.

[516] Bron’s brigade was composed of the 4th, 20th, 26th Dragoons, Bouvier’s of the 14th, 17th, 27th Dragoons, Vinot’s of the 2nd Hussars and 27th chasseurs, Briche’s of the 10th Hussars and 21st chasseurs.

[517] 1st, 5th, 7th, 8th of the Line, only 9 squadrons altogether, and slightly over 1,000 sabres.

[518] Apparently a squadron each of Borbon and Reyna, the rest of the Spanish cavalry being on the Monasterio Road. Penne Villemur was sick at Villafranca. Strength about 300 sabres.

[519] Lumley in his very modest dispatch (Wellington, Supplementary Dispatches, xiii. pp. 654-6) under-estimates the damage he had done to the enemy. He states his 78 prisoners, and notes that 29 French dead had been counted, but only speaks of 50 wounded. There were really over 200. In combats with the arme blanche, the number of killed is always very small compared with that of the wounded, which here was about 8 to 1—not at all an unusual proportion in cavalry fights. A good account from the French side may he found in Picard’s Histoire de la Cavalerie, 1792-1815, vol. ii. pp. 315-16.

[520] Only two squadrons strong, because the remainder of the regiment was at Cadiz: it had (as will be remembered) done good service under Graham at Barrosa.

[521] It arrived by June 1st, according to Mr. Atkinson’s useful list of Wellington’s divisional organization.

[522] Mulcaster’s company, the first to arrive, reached Spain some weeks later. By the time of the third siege of Badajoz in 1812 there were so many as 115(!) military artificers available.

[523] Refer back to [pp. 283-4] for details.

[524] D’Urban’s diary under June 10th, when the siege was just developing into an acknowledged failure.

[525] 30 brass 24-pounders, 4 16-pounders, 4 ten-inch howitzers, 8 eight-inch ditto, according to Dickson’s letter of May 29. See his papers, ed. Leslie, p. 394. I follow him rather than Jones’s Sieges of the Peninsula, where they differ, as he is absolutely contemporary authority, and was the officer in charge of everything.

[526] Dickson Papers, ed. Leslie, p. 405.

[527] Jones, Sieges of the Peninsula, i. p. 54.

[528] Jones, Sieges of the Peninsula, i. p. 57.

[529] This decision was the result of the report of an engineer officer, Lieutenant Forster, who crept up to the edge of the ditch during the night of the 5th-6th, and saw much rubble therein.

[530] Details of the orders for the assault may he found on pp. 62-3 of Jones’s Sieges, vol. i.

[531] 51st Regiment: 3 killed, an officer and 35 men wounded, 3 missing = 42.

85th Regiment: 2 officers and 6 men wounded = 8.

17th Portuguese: 9 killed, 2 officers and 26 men wounded = 37.

Chasseurs Britanniques and Brunswick Oels: 7 wounded.

Engineers: 1 officer mortally wounded. Jones says (i. 65) 12 killed and 90 wounded, but D’Urban gives the number stated above, and the figures of the returns bear him out.

[532] Lamare, p. 193.

[533] The forlorn hope was again led by Dyas of the 51st.

[534] For details see Houston’s orders on pp. 77-9 of Jones’s vol. i.

[535] French observers in the fort noted one attempt made by men of their own nationality, from the Chasseurs Britanniques. A young officer, calling ‘Je monte, suivez-moi,’ got to the top of the ladder with two or three of his soldiers, ran some feet forward up the lip of the breach, and was then bayoneted. This must have been Lieutenant Dufief of the C.B., the only officer of the corps returned as hurt in the storm. See Lapéne’s Campagne de 1810-11 dans le Midi de l’Espagne, p. 210.

[536] The losses were, according to the report:—

Killed.Wounded.Missing.
Offs.Men.Offs.Men.Offs.Men. Total.
51st123231——=57
85th171101—=20
Chasseurs Britanniques—8113—2=24
Brunswick Oels—115——=7
17th Portuguese2101161—=30
Engineers1—————=1
Total, 54 killed, 81 wounded, and 4 missing=139

[537] Lamare, p. 179.

[538] Lapéne, p. 212. Cf. Lamare, p. 203.

[539] See Burgoyne’s Diary, i. p. 135: ‘There is an account current that his Lordship says if he undertakes another siege he will be his own engineer. Whatever faults were committed at Badajoz I suspect he was not aware of them, and I think it very doubtful whether he even knows them now. It appears to me probable that he did say so, by the mystery affected about our [the engineer] head quarters respecting the siege.’ Burgoyne, an engineer with his feelings hurt, under-values Wellington’s intelligence.

[540] See pp. [361-2].

[541] These figures, given by Marmont in his Mémoires, iv. pp. 40-1, are borne out by the official states.

[542] Bessières writes to Berthier on May 23 that he has 4,000 men of the Army of Portugal, convalescents and drafts, in his government, who could be sent forward if there were officers to take charge of them. In reality the figures were even greater. There were also some 4,000 sick in the hospitals of the army at Salamanca, &c.

[543] Soult to Marmont, May 27th, printed in Marmont’s Mémoires, iv. 93-5. It contains much rhodomontade on the ‘successful’ action of Albuera, to which Marmont appends a caustic note, ‘Excellente plaisanterie que de représenter comme une victoire une bataille offensive dont le but n’a pas été atteint!’

[544] Mémoires, iv. [p]. 100.

[545] See especially Berliner to Marmont of May 27.

[546] Berthier to Marmont, 10th May, 1811.

[547] Berthier to Marmont, June 17th.

[548] Howard’s brigade consisted of the 1/50th, 1/71st, 1/92nd, and a rifle company of the 5/60th.

[549] The battalions which went home were the 2/28th, 29th, 2/48th, 2/39th.

[550] Light Division diaries (Simmons) show these to be the correct days.

[551] Wellington to Spencer, 2nd of June, Dispatches, vii. p. 633.

[552] Marmont says only one division, and I follow him here, as the best authority, though Foy in his Mémoires says two divisions.

[553] Slade’s and Barbaçena’s brigades. The other British cavalry brigade (Anson’s) had marched for the south on June 1, and was at this moment at Caria, near Castello Branco.

[554] Wellington was still more angry with Spencer for authorizing Pack to blow up the place, for the brigadier had very properly asked definite leave to do so from his immediate superior. Wellington argued that a proper reading of his dispatches would have showed Spencer that the destruction was only to be made in case Marmont actually marched on Almeida. See Dispatches, viii. p. 1.

[555] See Napier, iii. p. 312; Ainslie’s History of the Royals, pp. 120-1; Tomkinson, p. 105.

[556] See [p. 437].

[557] Napier says that Spencer on his southern march ‘detached a division and his cavalry to Coria as flankers’ (iii. 312). I think this statement that the British flank-guard was pushed forward into Spain is an error, caused by the similarity of names between the Spanish Coria and Caria in Portugal, between Sabugal and Castello Branco. For it is certain that Anson’s cavalry brigade were at Caria June 3rd-9th, and then went on to Castello Branco and Villa Velha, while Slade’s cavalry were from the 7th to the 15th between Alfayates and Castello Branco. See the regimental histories.

[558] See Leach, p. 221.

[559] Napier’s statement (iii. p. 312) that ‘the Light Division did not leave a single straggler behind’ is contradicted by the note of Leach of the 95th (p. 221) that ‘on June 11 many hundreds of men were left by the wayside quite exhausted by the intense heat, which compelled us to make frequent halts by day and to proceed by night.’ Tomkinson also notes that the Light Division lost men, who fell dead from sunstroke while marching up the steep ascent to Niza on June 13th (p. 106). He says that the Light Division men were so willing that they marched on till the last possible moment, and reeled over to die.

[560] Foy’s Mémoires, ed. Girod de L’Ain, p. 146.

[561] According to a report brought to Wellington by a British intelligence-officer in that direction, as early as the 13th. But this is probably an error of a day. Dispatches, viii. p. 37.

[562] The regiments which received a battalion were the 40th, 64th, 88th, 100th, 103rd, 21st and 28th Léger of the 5th Corps, and the 16th Léger. The cavalry regiments which received squadrons were the 4th, 14th, 26th Dragoons.

[563] The 4th batts. of the 8th, 54th, 63rd, 24th, 45th, 94th, 95th, and 96th Line, and the 9th and 27th Léger. There were also odd squadrons of the 1st, 2nd, and 9th Dragoons.

[564] I follow Scovell, as an eye-witness, when he says that the bulk of the infantry crossed by the fords. Napier says they went over the flying-bridge below Badajoz (iii. p. 313). But Moyle Sherer (p. 167) says that the 2nd Division forded the Guadiana, and Vere’s Marches of the 4th Division (p. 17) says the same of Cole’s brigades.

[565] ‘The principal ford is by Porta de Coito, but there are five or six between that spot and Badajoz.’ Scovell’s diary, June 17.

[566] Dispatches, vii, last two pages of the volume.

[567] Dispatches, viii. pp. 3-4, 19, 20.

[568] See for his confidence in the combination his dispatch to Lord Liverpool of June 27. (Dispatches, viii. p. 57.)

[569] ‘Il était dans l’ivresse de la joie et de la reconnaissance,’ says Marmont (Mémoires, iv. p. 45). Soult’s letters to Berthier give Marmont a handsome testimonial.

[570] The French reports show that Wellington was wrong in thinking (Dispatches, vol. viii, June 22) that the enemy got no glimpse of the British infantry. They apparently detected the 3rd and 7th Divisions.

[571] The remainder under Major von Busche was still at Cadiz. It will be remembered that it took a distinguished part in the battle of Barrosa.

[572] The loss was 8 killed, 1 officer and 20 men wounded, 1 officer and 35 men unwounded prisoners.

[573] There are two good accounts of this skirmish near Quinta de Gremezia, one in a letter by Captain von Stolzenburg of the hussars (in Schwertfeger’s History of the K.G.L., ii. 247), the other by George Farmer, a trooper of the 11th Light Dragoons, whose little autobiography was published by Gleig in 1844, under the title of The Light Dragoon, see vol. i. pp. 92-7. Farmer says that the French dragoons in their rear were taken at first for Portuguese squadrons coming up from Elvas to reinforce the line.

[574] Wellington to Lord Liverpool, Dispatches, viii. p. 58.

[575] Wellington to Erskine (then commanding the cavalry division to which the 11th belonged), June 22. Dispatches, viii. p. 40.

[576] They exist in the D’Urban papers, though not printed in the Wellington dispatches, and fall into three sections: What is to be done if the French attack (1) the left (near Campo Mayor); (2) the centre (along the Caya); (3) the right (by Elvas).

[577] This description of the allied position differs, it may be noted, from Napier’s (iii. p. 314), where it is said that the 1st Division was retained at Portalegre as a general reserve. I think that this is an error for the 5th Division—perhaps a printer’s error perpetuated through many editions—like some others in his great work. For the journals of the Guards’ brigade of the 1st Division (Stothert, p. 259; Stepney, p. 130) show that it left Portalegre on the 19th, and was at Santa Olalla near Elvas on the 23rd. Oddly enough, Lord Londonderry makes the same mistake (ii. 170), saying that Spencer was kept back at Portalegre with his whole corps (i. e. the 1st, 5th, 6th Divisions). Gomm’s diary (p. 226) vouches for the 5th and 6th being near Portalegre on the 24th.

[578] The last morning states of the army, those of mid June, give a total for the British of 1,843 officers and 33,205 men of all arms fit for service. Roughly the details are: Cavalry, 3,600; 1st Division, 5,000; 2nd Division, 4,100; 3rd Division, 3,300; 4th Division, 3,300; 5th Division, 3,200; 6th Division, 3,100; 7th Division (including Alten’s brigade), 3,000; Light Division, 2,900; Artillery, Engineers, &c., 2,300. Portuguese units: three weak cavalry brigades (Madden, Otway, Barbaçena), 1,400; nine and a half infantry brigades (Ashworth, Pack, Power, Spry, Collins, Campbell, Fonseca, Harvey, Coleman, and Elder’s Caçadores) varying from 1,500 to 2,200 bayonets, 17,000; Artillery, 800. I cannot understand Napier’s statement that there were only 14,000 Portuguese present, 17,000 seeming the lowest possible figure. Wellington (to Lord Liverpool, June 24) says that he has 41,000 effective rank and file of infantry; adding (as usual) one-eighth more for officers, sergeants, and staff, we get 46,000 total for infantry. Now 29,000 being certainly British (as by return above) there must be 17,000 Portuguese of all ranks, which tallies with the figure above. The artillery details are from the Dickson Papers, ed. Leslie, i. p. 407. D’Urban, under July 15th (when a regiment or two, e. g. the 68th, had joined from Lisbon), says that the allied total of rank and file was: Infantry, 44,600; Cavalry, 4,200; Artillery, 2,200 = 51,000 in all, or adding officers and sergeants, &c., about 57,500. This seems a high estimate for the infantry, but low for the cavalry and artillery.

[579] All these details are set out in full in the orders copied in D’Urban’s diary.

[580] These two noteworthy dispatches are accessible in the Appendix to vol. i of Belmas, to those who have not time to visit the Paris Archives.

[581] vol. iii. p. 316.

[582] Napier (iii. p. 317) suggests that since the stores of Elvas had run low, and its ammunition reserve in especial had been much depleted by the expenditure of shot and shell before Badajoz, the place was in such a dangerous condition that ‘Soult (had he known this state of affairs) might have passed the Guadiana by the fords, and by means of his pontoons from Badajoz, might have overpowered the Allies’ right, invested Elvas, and covered his army by lines, unless indeed the English general, anticipating the attempt, defeated him between the Caya and Elvas. This might not have been easy in an open country, which offered every advantage to the overwhelming cavalry and artillery of the French.’ With all humility, I must express my doubts as to the wisdom or practicability of this course. An army of 60,000 men, with another of 54,000 in its front, cannot, surely, venture to form the siege of a first-class fortress unless it has previously beaten the covering army in a general action. Napier suggests that Soult should push back Wellington’s right and surround Elvas. But the attempt must have brought on a general action, close under the walls of Elvas, in which the Allies would have had every advantage of position.

[583] Soult’s dispatch of June 24 says that he has just heard that Blake has gone off southward.

[584] Four battalions, two cavalry regiments, and a battery had been lent for the field army.

[585] Of the four regiments garrisoning that region three (12th Léger, 51st, 55th) had joined the Albuera army. Sebastiani had to lend several battalions to take their place.

[586] See Mémoires, iv. p. 47.

[587] i. e. two infantry divisions, and Briche’s light cavalry, 14,000 men, since the drafts had come under Drouet.

[588] When a siege seemed probable General Leite demolished a number of houses and trees too close to the walls, improved the works by clearing the ditch and strengthening parapets, and did his best to draw in all available provisions. This last was hard, when so large a friendly army was close at hand, eating up the country-side.

[589] Elaborate marching arrangements, and timing for all these destinations, are found in D’Urban’s diary under July 18.

[590] Dispatches, vii. p. 503.

[591] The new arrivals were (see Atkinson’s ‘British Army in the Peninsula’ in English Historical Review for 1907): 2nd Hussars K.G.L. (15th April), 11th Light Dragoons (by June 1), 12th Light Dragoons (by July 1), 9th Light Dragoons (by August 1), 3rd Dragoons and 4th Dragoon Guards (before September 1). The brigading became—1st Division (Stapleton Cotton): Slade’s brigade, 1st Royals and 12th Light Dragoons; Anson’s brigade, 14th and 16th Light Dragoons; Alten’s brigade, 11th Light Dragoons, 1st Hussars K.G.L.; Le Marchant’s brigade, 3rd Dragoons and 4th Dragoon Guards. 2nd Division (Erskine): Long’s brigade, 2nd Hussars K.G.L., 9th and 13th Light Dragoons; De Grey’s brigade, 3rd Dragoon Guards, 4th Dragoons.

[592] See [p. 435].

[593] To go into details, the 1st Division not only gave over Howard’s brigade (50th, 71st, 92nd) to Hill, but sent home the 7th Line battalion of the K.G.L., whose rank and file were drafted into the three senior Line battalions of that corps. From the 2nd Division the 2/28th, 29th, 2/39th, 2/48th went home, and the 1/48th was transferred to the 4th Division: but the 1/28th and 1/39th came out to Portugal and joined. The 3rd Division got one new battalion (77th) in July. In the 4th Division the 1/7th and 2/7th were amalgamated, but the number of battalions was kept as before by the transference of the 1/48th from the 2nd Division. The 6th Division got one new unit, the 2/32nd. The 7th Division took over Alten’s K.G.L. light battalions, and received the 68th, but sent home the 85th, after it had been only seven months in the Peninsula. Wellington refused to keep this regiment, which on its return to England went through a series of court-martials, testifying to grave internal faults.

[594] This was done by an Imperial decree issued on December 13th through Berthier.

[595] Silveira had only one infantry regiment of regulars (no. 24) and two squadrons of regular dragoons, as also two batteries of old artillery. Wilson had one squadron of regular dragoons.

[596] See especially Berthier to Bessières, of May 19, from Rambouillet.

[597] See especially Wellington to General Walker (British attaché with the Army of Galicia), Dispatches, vii. p. 648, where the siege of Astorga and the troubling of Bonnet in Asturias are the operations recommended. Castaños was still titular Captain-General in Galicia as well as in Estremadura.

[598] The 113th were a new Tuscan regiment, raised in 1809, which had been practically destroyed in Catalonia, and sent home to recruit. The 32nd Léger was Genoese.

[599] For details of its movements see Napoleon’s Correspondance, 17,784, June 8th, 1811.

[600] This was a newly created regiment, formed out of a number of provisional battalions, which had been doing garrison duty in Biscay for the last year.

[601] Bessières grossly underrated his own force in a letter to Berthier of June 6th, in which he stated the whole at only 44,000 men.

[602] See Bessières to Berthier of June 6th, from Valladolid.

[603] I cannot discover which of the passes west of Pajares Castañon used. They are all difficult.

[604] The brigade (119th, 122nd Line) lost fourteen officers on June 23rd, which would argue total casualties of about 300 at the usual rate. But the Spaniards say that they took many prisoners and give the total French loss at 450.

[605] See especially his dispatch to Berthier of June 6: ‘On fait illusion à l’Empereur—tout le monde connaît le mode vicieux de nos opérations, &c.’—it is most free-spoken.

[606] For Thiébault’s character of Dorsenne see his Mémoires vol. iv. pp. 401-2.

[607] See Dispatches, vii. p. 648, for an account of Abadia’s good intentions, and viii. p. 128, for Wellington’s disappointment at their non-fulfilment.

[608] Our old acquaintance of Gamonal and Tamames.

[609] ‘Galicia was helpless, and Dorsenne would have taken Coruña and Ferrol if the arrival of Wellington on the Coa had not alarmed him,’ iii. p. 330. This statement shows a misconception of the situation.

[610] This general is not to be confused with Roguet, the Guard commander, though they were operating in regions close to each other, and often get mixed in contemporary narratives.

[611] From the Memoirs of Sir Howard Douglas, British commissioner with Abadia’s army, pp. 122-3.

[612] History of the Peninsular War, iii. p. 186.

[613] His troops had plundered the Portuguese peasantry freely during their rapid march, and actually came to skirmishing with the local Ordenança. For anecdotes by an eye-witness, Schepeler, see his book, i. p. 304.

[614] For which see Schepeler, p. 307. On a false alarm the troops began to embark on the transports without orders, and in great disarray. Blake, according to Schepeler, made a ridiculous spectacle of himself, by wading a long way through shallow water to get out to a small boat. There were no French within many miles.

[615] See table of the Army of Murcia (3rd Army) on June 1st, in [Appendix XVII].

[616] See vol. iii. pp. 4 and 104.

[617] The Marquis had only taken over charge of Valencia from Charles O’Donnell a few weeks before.

[618] This provisional division of 9th Corps troops (see [p. 445]) had already sent off some of its battalions to join Victor before Cadiz, since the units belonged to the 1st Corps.

[619] There is a good account of this obscure campaign by Schepeler, an eye-witness, in his Spanische Monarchie, pp. 558-62, and a longer one in Arteche, vol. x.

[620] Schepeler (p. 460) mentions that during his short halt on the frontier of Murcia, Soult court-martialled and shot a French émigré officer in the Spanish service captured on the 9th—Charles Cléry, the son of the faithful servant of Louis XVI, who was so long with his master in the Temple prison. As he had been out of France for many years, first in the Austrian and then in the Spanish army, this was a cruel stretch of the idea of treason.

[621] See above, [page 243].

[622] One battalion each of the 44th and 115th Ligne and 1st of the Vistula, and the Italian Dragons de Napoléon.

[623] At Saragossa one battalion each of the 5th Léger and 117th Ligne; at Calatayud two battalions of 14th Ligne.

[624] Two battalions of the 44th, two of the 2nd of the Vistula.

[625] Three battalions of the 114th and two of the 121st, with two squadrons of cuirassiers.

[626] Two battalions of the 115th Ligne.

[627] Two battalions of the 121st Ligne.

[628] One battalion of the 115th, one of the 3rd of the Vistula, and apparently some of the Neapolitans.

[629] Down to this winter Suchet could only communicate with France up the Ebro and sent messengers via Tudela and Pampeluna, but he had just opened a somewhat shorter route for himself via Jaca and Oleron, which saved three days. Even so, communications were intolerably slow. See Suchet’s Mémoires, ii. p. 9.

[630] As Suchet remarks (ii. p. 17) the Emperor at Paris could have the news of the fall of Figueras on April 15th or 16th, while he himself only got it on April 21st.

[631] For all these arguments and others see Suchet’s Mémoires, ii. pp. 5-18.

[632] See vol. i. p. 37.

[633] Vacani, iii. p. 25, says that the best part of the garrison had been out on an expedition in the hills all the day, seeking for the bands who were said to be threatening the French frontier. They returned late at night tired out, and slept the sleep of the weary, while recruits and convalescents were furnishing the few guards considered necessary in such a strong place. A picket of Neapolitans who were in charge of the main gate were captured without resistance, being attacked, to their surprise, from the inside of the fortress.

[634] Napier suggests (iii. 222) that Peyri might have tried to assail San Fernando before the enemy was properly settled down into it. This seems a most doubtful criticism: he had only 650 men of drafts with him; neither he nor they knew the topography of the fortress; it was pitch dark; the strength of the enemy was unknown. The garrison had succumbed in a few minutes despite of all its advantages of position. To attack would have been foolhardy.

[635] See Napoleon, Correspondance, xxii. no. 17,644. Plauzonne’s regiments were the 3rd Léger, 11th and 79th Line, and four battalions of the 67th Line and one of the 16th Léger also crossed the frontier.

[636] So the French narratives. Martinien’s lists show three officers killed and thirteen wounded on May 3 before Figueras. The regiments which suffered most were the 3rd and 23rd Léger, each with one officer killed and four wounded.

[637] The regulars left in San Fernando were two battalions of Voluntarios de Valencia, one of Ultonia, and two of Antequera.

[638] The composition of the divisions of the Army of Catalonia was shifting, and hard to follow, but (as far as I can make out) Courten’s division consisted of three battalions of Granada, two each of Almanza, Almeria, and America, while the sedentary garrison contained four or five battalions of the new Catalan ‘Sections’ or ‘local line,’ besides a battalion of Voluntarios de Tarragona.

[639] Apparently there was in 1811 no road of this sort, up the steep slope above the railway station of to-day; the main chaussée from Valencia entered the upper city at its north-western end, and there was no good road for carriages up the south-western point, as there is now (the so-called Despeñaperros).

[640] Long since built over. The line of the old fortifications of the upper city is now marked by a broad promenade, the Rambla de San Juan.

[641] It is a stiff climb up a very steep ascent to enter the upper city by its ‘Barcelona Gate.’

[642] The regiments that landed with Campoverde seem to have been the 2nd of Savoia (2 battalions), Voluntarios de Gerona, and two of the Andalusian regiments which had formed the core of Reding’s old Granadan division, which marched to Catalonia in 1808, viz. Iliberia and Santa Fé, the first three battalions strong, the other with two.

[643] This discovery was the work of the Italian engineer officer Vacani, whose work on the campaign of the Italian troops of Napoleon in Spain is one of the most valuable of our original sources. See his vol. v. pp. 175-6. He was with the assaulting column.

[644] Three battalions of Iliberia were holding the fort on the 29th; they had been much tried, and two battalions of the sister-regiment of Almeria were coming up to relieve them.

[645] Vacani is very positive that the stormers at the aqueduct got into the fort before those at the gorge.

[646] Suchet says that except 70 officers and 1,000 men taken prisoners ‘the whole of the rest of the garrison had perished’ (ii. 60). Belmas (iii. 502) speaks of 970 prisoners and says that 1,200 were killed, but acknowledges that ‘some of the Spaniards’ got away. Vacani (v. 187) says that ‘many’ Spaniards escaped, but that the bulk of six battalions were destroyed, 1,000 being captured and 1,200 slain. The governor, Contreras, says that there were 4,000 men in the fort, and that somewhere about 2,000 were killed or wounded (p. 248). But the figures must have been lower: Iliberia was about 1,500 strong, Almeria about 1,200: there were also 200 gunners in the fort: the total garrison therefore was about 3,000. But at the end of the siege, a month later, Iliberia surrendered 368 unwounded men, and Almeria 464. They must have lost many hundreds during the last six weeks of the leaguer, yet were still 832 strong. It is hard to see that they can have lost more than 1,200 or 1,300 between them on May 29, and very probably Toreno and Arteche are right in putting the total loss at only 1,100 and odd. If so, the killed, including the gunners, must have been only between 300 and 400. The ever-accurate Schepeler gives 1,200 for the total loss (p. 433), and I suspect is nearest of all to the truth. Napier, as usual, merely reproduces Suchet’s figures.

[647] See his pamphlet on the defence of Tarragona and his own responsibilities, printed in the 3rd volume of Mémoires sur la Guerre d’Espagne.

[648] Apparently 3rd battalion of Cazadores de Valencia, and 1st battalion of the First regiment of Savoia. This last must be carefully distinguished from the 1st battalion of the Second regiment of Savoia, which belonged to the Catalan army, and had already been brought into Tarragona on May 10th by Campoverde. See the history of the two in the Conde de Clonard’s colossal work on the regimental histories of the Spanish line.

[649] Suchet in his memoirs conceals the fact that the fort was already abandoned when his troops entered (ii. p. 72). But the evidence of Contreras, Schepeler, and other Spanish authorities is clear and unanimous.

[650] The first was a big affair, 3,000 men under Sarsfield taking part in it, but oddly enough it is not mentioned by Suchet or Belmas.

[651] It seems to have arrived about June 20, in time for the storm on the 21st.

[652] See his memoirs, p. 273, and Arteche, x. 274.

[653] See especially Schepeler (i. 438). Arteche (x. 317) grants that he had not the iron resolution of Alvarez, the governor of Gerona, but thinks that he did his honest best, and this I think can hardly be denied. His own narrative is simple and modest, but does not conceal the fact that he was from the first downhearted, and feared the worst. Napier (iii. 240) calls him vacillating and deceitful. There is some foundation for the former charge (see [p. 513] below), but the latter seems unjustifiable. The only evidence brought to justify the accusation can be explained away (see Codrington’s letters in the appendix to Napier, vol. iii).

[654] Toreno (ii. p. 544) makes out that the fault was with Contreras, and Napier, who used far more violent language, says that he ‘acted a shameful part.... The assault was momentarily expected, yet he ordered Sarsfield to embark immediately, averring that he had Campoverde’s peremptory commands. Sarsfield remonstrated vainly, saying that the troops would be left to an inefficient subordinate, but was compelled to embark, and Velasco, coming a few hours later, found only the dead bodies of his garrison. Contreras then assured Codrington and the Junta that Sarsfield had gone without orders, and betrayed his post!’ There is much misrepresentation in this: (1) Contreras had Campoverde’s command to send him Sarsfield without delay. (2) He passed the order on to Sarsfield, but did not know that the latter had gone off, without waiting a moment, after sending him a note to say that Don José Carlos, the senior colonel in the lower city, was incompetent to take command. Naturally Contreras thought that Sarsfield would have waited to see Velasco and hand over the troops to him. (3) Therefore Contreras was correct in saying to the Junta that Sarsfield departed ‘sin conocimiento mío,’ though he had sent him a passport to leave the town. See Arteche, ix. 288-9.

[655] The troops were the 2/47th, a detachment of the 3/95th, and some light companies lent by the governor of Gibraltar, 1,147 in all, counting the gunners. See Graham’s dispatches to Lord Liverpool and to Colonel Skerret of June 14th, 1811.

[656] That this represents pretty accurately what happened is, I think, clear from the comparison of Codrington’s very full letter to General Graham (see his Life, i. 225), Skerret’s report to Graham and the Regency (printed in Arteche, ix. pp. 544-5), and Contreras’s own narrative of the siege. This version, as it will be seen, differs from that of Napier, who is much harder on Skerret than he deserves—though the colonel was an unlucky officer and distrusted by his subordinates (see e. g. Sir Harry Smith’s autobiography, i. pp. 118-19).

[657] The critical phrase of Graham’s instructions to Skerret was: ‘You will before landing your detachment state to the governor that you must have at all times free and open communication with his Majesty’s ships of war: and in the event of the place being under the necessity of surrendering, that you are at liberty to withdraw the troops on board the said ships previous to the capitulation.’ The orders are dated June 14.

[658] Codrington, looking on from his ship, says that the storm succeeded ‘almost immediately,’ and that ‘from the rapidity with which they [the French] entered, I fear they met with but little opposition.’ (Life, i. 227.) This is borne out by Contreras’s narrative.

[659] For details of this sally see Codrington’s letter of July 29 in his Life, i. p. 228.

[660] Those who like to sup on horrors may read the original document in Arteche’s Appendix X to his tenth volume, pp. 546-8.

[661] See [table XX] in Appendix.

[662] See [table XX] in Appendix.

[663] e. g. see Schepeler, i. 343, and Arteche, x. 314.

[664] Interesting details of his perilous escape, in company with a French royalist officer, Bouvet de Lozier, and of his final arrival in England, may be found in his Narrative, written in 1813.

[665] For the wording of the votes see the précis of the council of war in the Appendix to Arteche, vol. x. pp. 550-2. Caro, San Juan, Velasco, and Carrasquedo voted for embarkation: Sarsfield, Santa Cruz, and Campoverde for holding on in Catalonia. Miranda would not vote, ‘not considering himself as belonging to the Catalan army,’ but was in favour of the evacuation. Eroles was absent.

[666] Letter of Codrington, in his Life, i. p. 235.

[667] Codrington says that he only embarked 2,400 men out of the 4,000 who had come to Catalonia. The cavalry had gone another way, and 600 or 800 men had deserted, some to join the somatenes, others to find their way home to Valencia as best they could.

[668] Apparently while the army was at Agramunt near Cervera, about July 4th. See Codrington’s correspondence in his Life, i. 236, and in Napier’s Appendix to vol. iii. p. 398. For testimonials to the honourable and patriotic conduct of Eroles throughout the campaign, see Codrington’s letters, passim.

[669] One of Ultonia, two of Antequera, 1st and 2nd of the Voluntarios de Valencia.

[670] See Vacani, v. p. 313. It will be remembered that when Masséna was in a similar position at Genoa in 1800, be refused to dismiss his Austrian prisoners, and allowed many hundreds of them to die of starvation. Martinez was more merciful.

[671] ‘Hasta los insectos más inmundos’ as Martinez wrote to the Catalan Junta.

[672] They both became officers in the Catalan army, and survived for many years after the war; the elder died, a retired brigadier-general, in the year 1850. See Arteche, x. 480. Vacani and Napier err in saying that he was hanged with Marquez, who was his cousin.

[673] Correspondance, vol. xxii, no. 18,066.

[674] An interesting study of the reorganization of the Catalan army in August-September 1811 is given in Estalella’s El Batallon de Hostalrich (Madrid, 1909), an account of the fortunes of Manso’s new Cazadores de Cataluña in 1811-14.

[675] These divisions were those of Maucune, Sarrut, and Ferey.

[676] Clausel’s division in the province of Avila, Brennier at Plasencia.

[677] For an interesting account of the experiences of an officer sent to scrape together drafts and convalescents despite of the petty governors, see the diary of Sprünglin, pp. 484-5. He had special difficulties with Thiébault, the Governor of Salamanca.

[678] Correspondence from Berthier printed in Marmont’s Autobiography, iv. p. 122.

[679] See Joseph to Marmont in the correspondence of the latter, iv. pp. 150-6.

[680] See above, [p. 219].

[681] Marmont’s Mémoires, iv. p. 58.

[682] Intercepted dispatch from Marmont to Berthier of August 5th, printed in Supplementary Wellington Dispatches, xiii. p. 690.

[683] Mémoires, iv. p. 55.

[684] See Wellington to Lord Liverpool, Dispatches, vii. p. 115.

[685] D’Urban in his diary often harps upon this project.

[686] ‘We should meet in Andalusia the whole force which lately obliged us to raise the siege of Badajoz, with the addition to it of the force which was left before Cadiz.... An attempt to relieve Cadiz would certainly not succeed.’ Dispatches, vii. p. 118.

[687] From the same letter to Lord Liverpool, Dispatches, vii. 118.

[688] See the all-important dispatch of July 18, in which these three points are set forth. Dispatches, vii. 118.

[689] Dispatches, vii. 184: ‘I should imagine that the reports have some foundation.’ August 9th.

[690] Dispatches, vii. p. 194. August 14th.

[691] By August 21st he has heard that the 5th Léger and other new regiments from the interior of France are over the Pyrenees. Dispatches, vii. p. 215.

[692] Dispatches, vii. 119, July 18th.

[693] It is contained in the ‘Memorandum for Colonels Frampton and Fletcher’ of 19th July, dated the day after the dispatch to Lord Liverpool which sets forth the whole project.

[694] Bredin’s and Glubb’s, which had long been lying at Lisbon without horses, and had taken no part in the field operations of 1810 and 1811. Holcombe’s battery was soon afterwards substituted for Glubb’s. See Dickson’s Diary (ed. Leslie) for months of August-October 1811.

[695] Wellington saw this clearly enough; he writes to Lord Liverpool on August 27: ‘If we cannot maintain this blockade, the enemy must bring 50,000 men to raise it, and then they can undertake nothing else this year, for they must still continue to watch Rodrigo, and we shall so far save the cause. Meanwhile if they offer me a favourable opportunity of bringing any of them to action, I shall take it.’ Dispatches, viii. p. 232.

[696] Mr. Fortescue sends me the subjoined note on Spencer from a suppressed letter of Wellington to Pole at Apsley House, not to be found in any of the editions of the Dispatches. ‘The person who is now here as second in command is very unfit for his situation. He is a good executive officer, but has no mind, and is incapable of forming any opinions of his own. He is the centre of all the vulgar and foolish opinions of the day. Thus you are aware that, from former experiences, I cannot depend upon him for a moment, for anything. He gives his opinion upon every subject, changes it with the wind, and if any misfortune occurs, or the act recommended by him is disapproved of, there is no effort to be looked for from him.’ This verdict does not much differ, save in strength of expression, from the opinion of minor contemporaries, such as Tomkinson and Stepney, e. g. ‘Sir Brent Spencer, a zealous gallant officer, had no great military genius. He was anxious and fidgety when there was nothing to do, but once under fire looked like a philosopher solving a problem—perfectly cool and self-possessed.’ (Stepney’s Leaves from a Diary of an Officer of the Guards, p. 80.) See also in Stepney for notes as to Spencer’s resentment at his supersession by Graham. This has value, as the diarist was a favourite of the general, who had offered to make him his aide-de-camp.

[697] 11th Light Dragoons and 1st Hussars K.G.L.

[698] 3rd Dragoon Guards and 4th Dragoons. Properly belonging to Erskine’s cavalry division in the Alemtejo, but borrowed.

[699] 1st Royals and 12th Light Dragoons.

[700] 14th and 16th Light Dragoons.

[701] For whose actions see section xxix. [p. 597].

[702] Marmont to Berthier, Correspondance, p. 165, in the 4th vol. p. 163 of his Mémoires.

[703] See all the August correspondence of 1811 in his Mémoires, iv. pp. 143-62.

[704] On August 26th according to his narrative, iv. p. 61.

[705] Ibid., p. 60.

[706] Graham’s diary in his Life, by Delavoye, p. 577.

[707] Ibid., August 29th.

[708] Ibid., September 2nd, p. 582.

[709] Wellington to Graham, September 16, Dispatches, viii. 284.

[710] To Beresford, Dispatches, viii. p. 97.

[711] This is mentioned in his letters to Henry Wellesley of August 22 and to Craufurd of August 28.

[712] To Henry Wellesley on August 28; cf. to Lord Liverpool of same date.

[713] To Lord Liverpool, Dispatches, viii. 256.

[714] Some typical regimental figures of September 15, 1811, may serve as illustrations. The 68th (only just landed) had 233 sick to 412 effective, the 51st (landed in April) 246 sick to 251 effective. The 77th landed on July 5th with 859 of all ranks, but had only 680 effective on August 5, and 560 on September 15. The 40th had, on September 15, 791 effective and 513 sick. The total sick on the last-named day were, ‘present’ 1,720, ‘hospitals’ 12,517, or 14,237 in all.

[715] Brigades of Pack and MacMahon, with the other five brigades incorporated in the 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th Divisions, and two weak cavalry brigades under Madden. See tables in [Appendix XX].

[716] Thiébault (Mémoires, iv. p. 510) gives the total at 48,000 infantry and nearly 4,000 cavalry. I imagine the real total to have been a little larger, about 58,000 in all. By the returns of the summer of 1811 the two guard-infantry divisions had 15,000 men, Serras’s (Thiébault’s) 4,000 men, Souham’s nearly 8,000.

[717] Wellington to Charles Stuart, from Fuente Guinaldo, September 23rd. Dispatches, viii. p. 299.

[718] According to Marmont (Mémoires, iv. p. 63) only one division, Thiébault’s, actually entered the town.

[719] This reason for his great reconnaissances of September 25th is the only one given by Marmont (Mémoires, iv. p. 63).

[720] This was the first time on which the British cavalry fought lancers (at Albuera it was only infantry which were charged by the Poles). Tomkinson of the 14th reports (Diary, p. 115): ‘They looked well and formidable till they were broken and closed with by our men, and then their lances were an encumbrance.... Many caught in the appointments of other men, and pulled them to the ground.’

[721] That of Lamotte (1st and 3rd Hussars, 15th and 22nd Chasseurs) and that of Fournier (7th, 13th, 20th Chasseurs).

[722] Graham’s diary, in his Life by Delavoye, p. 577.

[723] Wallace of the 88th was commanding the brigade vice Mackinnon, on sick leave in England.

[724] ‘Comme la position des Anglais était très dominante, je ne pouvais juger quelles forces ils avaient en arrière: il était possible que ses premières troupes fussent soutenues par d’autres. Ne voulant pas risquer un engagement sérieux, en les faisant attaquer par la seule division d’infanterie qui fût à portée [Thiébault], je pris le parti de n’employer à l’attaque que de la cavalerie et de l’artillerie. Si l’ennemi était en force, elle en serait quitte pour se retirer.’ (Mémoires, iv. p. 64.)

[725] Not counting the 21st Portuguese, which came up later, and was not engaged in the actual combat.

[726] The best account of this fine skirmish, carefully constructed from original authorities, is in Schwertfeger’s History of the German Legion, i. 337-9.

[727] Arentschildt’s gunners did not suffer so much as might have been expected, and Wellington was inaccurate when, in his dispatch, he says that they were cut down at their guns. The Portuguese returns show that they lost only one man killed and four wounded.

[728] They only made up 1,000 bayonets between them, and the 77th, only 450 strong, would have made a very small square by itself.

[729] Memoirs of Grattan of the 88th, pp. 116-17.

[730] 1st Hussars K.G.L. 5 killed, 2 officers and 32 men wounded, 5 men missing; 11th Light Dragoons 8 killed, 2 officers and 14 men wounded.

[731] According to Martinien’s invaluable lists, the 25th Dragoons lost 3 officers, the 22nd Chasseurs 4, the 6th and 15th Dragoons 2 each, the 8th and 10th Dragoons 1 each.

[732] Marmont, in his Mémoires, iv. p. 65, says that he sent for Thiébault’s division when Montbrun was checked, but ‘l’ordre, envoyé lentement, fut exécuté plus lentement encore,’ and Thiébault only appeared at nightfall. The general himself gives the explanation (Mémoires, iv): the French right (i. e. the wing towards Carpio) seeming to be menaced, ‘they sent me off to a point where no enemy was to be found.’

[733] Graham to Cathcart, in his Life by Delavoye, p. 598.

[734] Graham’s diary, ibid., August 26.

[735] For notes on this point see the life of Craufurd by his grandson, Rev. Alex. Craufurd, pp. 184-5. Wellington was vexed that the Light Division had not done the night march, and, according to Larpent’s Journal (p. 85) observed to Craufurd, with some asperity, ‘I am glad to see you safe.’ The answer was, ‘Oh! I was in no danger, I assure you.’ ‘But I was, from your conduct,’ answered Wellington. Upon which Craufurd observed, ‘He’s d——d crusty to-day.’

[736] The account of the march of the Light Division on this day is quite satisfactory. I have Sir John Bell’s note that the idea that Craufurd thought for a moment of retreating by the Pass of Perales, because he feared being intercepted at Robleda, is ‘nonsense.’

[737] Marmont (Mémoires, iv. p. 65) is very sure that he could have ‘isolated, turned, and enveloped’ Craufurd, and have destroyed him. But it is hard to see that he could really have done more than drive him on to an eccentric line of retreat.

[738] Thiébault, Mémoires, iv. p. 66.

[739] Marmont, Mémoires, iv. pp. 513-14.

[740] Thiébault, in his elaborate account of the skirmish (Mémoires, iv. pp. 522-5), says that he did not lose Aldea da Ponte, but I prefer to take Wellington’s definite statement that he did, supported by those of Vere (the Assistant-Quartermaster-General of the 4th Division) and Lord Londonderry—both eye-witnesses.

[741] Thirty killed and 120 wounded. Martinien’s lists show 7 casualties among officers of Thiébault’s regiments (3 in the 34th Léger, 3 in the regiment of Neuchâtel, 1 in the 4th of the Vistula). This at the average rate of 20 or 22 officers per man seems just right. By a tiresome misprint Thiébault speaks of himself as commanding the 31st Léger in many places. It was really the 34th. The 31st was in the Army of Portugal, not in that of the North.

[742] Note the curious misprint in the first line of p. 307 of Wellington Dispatches, vol. viii, of Light Dragoons for Light Division. Unless the misprint is noticed, the reader will ask why Wellington has omitted Craufurd in describing his order of battle. Napier, I know not why, has altogether neglected to explain the distribution of the British army, in the short paragraph of vol. iii. p. 342 which describes this day’s operations.

[743] Graham to Cathcart, October 1, in Delavoye’s Life of Lord Lynedoch, p. 598.

[744] Thiébault’s feelings were much hurt at the skirmish being called a ‘scuffle.’ ‘Il se permit de dire que mon combat de la veille était une échauffourée. Je ne rappelle le mot que pour peindre l’arrogance d’un de ces hommes à qui leur titre de Maréchal défendait d’admettre aucun mérite en dehors d’eux-mêmes’ (Mémoires, iv. 528).

[745] Graham to Cathcart, in Delavoye’s Life of Lord Lynedoch, p. 599.

[746] There were changes in detail in November, for which see Vere’s Marches of the 4th Division, p. 21.

[747] For all this see Dickson’s Diary, edited by Major Leslie, R.A., pp. 478-501. The order to start the first section of the siege-train for Almeida was only given on November 14. (Dickson, p. 505.)

[748] Afterwards replaced by one brigade of Dumoustier’s division of the Imperial Guard.

[749] See [p. 472].

[750] It may be found in Belmas, Appendix to vol. i. pp. 585-8. Marmont, for reasons not hard to divine, does not print it among the many documents containing his correspondence with the Emperor which appear in the Appendix to his Book XV. (Mémoires, vol. iv.)

[751] See [p. 546] above.

[752] The destruction of these stores is mentioned in Marmont’s Mémoires, iv. p. 68.

[753] This may be found printed in Belmas, vol. i. Appendix, pp. 588-90.

[754] Printed in Appendix to Marmont’s Mémoires, vol. iv. pp. 257-8.

[755] The sick have grown from 18,000 to 20,000 since the day before, which is the date of a less important dispatch, in which Marmont had been warned to set aside 6,000 men only for the Valencian expedition, because Wellington is absolutely unable to strike a blow.

[756] To be exact, Wellington’s Return of November 22, the day after Napoleon dictated this dispatch, was:—

British. Present, 38,311; Detached, 3,917; sick (present and absent), 16,000.

Portuguese. Present, 24,391; Detached, 2,087; sick (present and absent), 6,000.

[757] Memorandum, dated 28th December, 1811, at Freneda. (Dispatches, viii. pp. 518-19.)

[758] Note in Correspondence, Appendix of vol. iv of Mémoires, p. 259.

[759] See pp. [474-82] above.

[760] Martinien’s invaluable lists show only three officers wounded in the 16th.

[761] For Hill’s force at this time see [Appendix XXIII]. He had 5,800 British infantry, 7,400 Portuguese infantry, 1,800 British cavalry (including Le Marchant’s brigade at Castello Branco), 650 Portuguese cavalry, and about 600 artillery, &c., about 16,000 in all. Drouet had the 9th Corps, now about 14,000 strong (it had been recruited by the return to the ranks of the convalescents of the 4,000 Albuera wounded), and six regiments of cavalry from the Army of the South, bringing up his force to much the same figure.

[762] See above, pp. [587-8].

[763] Wellington to Hill, August 8th. (Dispatches, viii. pp. 180-2.)

[764] See for the recall the dispatch of October 4. (Dispatches, viii. p. 321.)

[765] For copious details see the Life of Morillo, by Don Antonio Villa, pp. 47-55 (Madrid, 1910).

[766] At the breaking up of the 9th Corps in June, Claparéde took over Gazan’s old division in the 5th Corps, and Conroux that of Ruffin in the 1st Corps. But the 9th Corps battalions were not all redistributed into their regiments till Conroux came back from Soult’s campaign against the Murcians in August.

[767] See Wellington to Hill, October 4 and October 10. (Dispatches, viii. pp. 321, and 332-3.)

[768] Wellington to Hill, from Freneda, October 16. (Dispatches, viii. pp. 333-4.)

[769] Same to same, October 17, acknowledging Hill’s proposal made in a letter of October 15.

[770] Apparently 20th Dragoons, 27th Chasseurs, 10th Hussars.

[771] 4th and 10th Line (2 batts. each) from Hamilton’s division, 6th and 18th Line (2 batts. each) and 6th Caçadores from Ashworth’s Brigade.

[772] This was the brigade composed of the remnant of Colborne’s and Hoghton’s old regiments, viz. Buffs, 1/57th, 2/31st, 2/66th.

[773] The remainder of Hamilton’s division, 2nd and 14th Line, and the 5th and 8th Cavalry.

[774] Hill in his dispatch says that the peasantry gave Girard no news of his approach. But in Blakeney’s interesting narrative of this campaign there is a story told that two Afrancesados warned the Frenchman of Hill’s approach, and that he refused to credit them. This was told to Blakeney by his prisoner, Colonel the Prince of Aremberg, commanding the 27th Chasseurs. See Blakeney, p. 236.

[775] The regiments, which were incomplete in July (see [Appendix XVIII]), had been joined before October by the battalion which each had contributed to the garrison of Badajoz.

[776] Blakeney’s account of his own exploit (pp. 228-9 of his book) is borne out by Hill’s recommendation of him, though he is not mentioned in the formal dispatch of October 30.

[777] This Rheinbund prince had been in great favour with Napoleon, and married Stephanie Tascher, niece of the Empress Josephine. He had raised the 27th Chasseurs at his own cost.

[778] Including 5/82nd, 528 strong, at Almeida.

[779] Including 4/15th and 3/86th, 1,451 strong, at Ciudad Rodrigo.

[780] Including five squadrons, 875 strong, left between Ciudad Rodrigo and Almeida.

[781] These two battalions were formed of the fourteen grenadier companies of the 1st and 2nd battalions of all the seven regiments of Laval’s and Ruffin’s divisions, including those of the 16th Léger, absent from the corps. The men are therefore all counted already in their battalions, save those of the 16th Léger, which would probably give 7 officers and 170 men to be added to the above total of 7,170. That these companies of the 16th were present is shown by the fact that two casualties of officers of the regiment are recorded in Martinien’s lists at Barrosa.

[782] Losses of these six companies are included among those of the other grenadiers in the return. They were little engaged, and probably lost only 20 or 30 men.

[783] This officer, Colonel Waters, of the Portuguese Staff, was taken prisoner on the Coa many miles from the battlefield, by the outposts of the French 6th Corps.

[784] These Portuguese figures include the officers.

[785] These Portuguese figures include the officers.

[786] These Portuguese figures include the officers.

[787] The 5th battalion of the 82nd was in garrison at Almeida.

[788] One battalion of the 15th Ligne, 585 strong, and one battalion of the 65th, 265 strong, and the Régiment de Prusse, 526 strong, were left in garrison at Ciudad Rodrigo. The cavalry brigade of the corps, composed of three provisional regiments of dragoons, was guarding communications.

[789] The return of losses is confused, there being mixtures of units, and some errors between officers and rank and file. It seems unlikely that Zayas’s division had 26 officers wounded and none killed. I have endeavoured to reconstruct items as far as possible. For the confused table see Arteche, vol. x. p. 524.

[790] Of this 681 no less than 98 killed and 517 wounded are in the four battalions of the Spanish Guards and Irlanda, which fought so long against Girard’s division. The other five battalions only lost 66 men between them.

[791] The 1/34th, 3/40th, 1/88th, 1/21st Léger, 3/100th were separated from their regiments and garrisoned Badajoz.

[792] The 34th regiment returned, as is clear, all its missing as killed.

[793] The 88th regiment returned, as is clear, all its killed as missing.

[794] This assemblage of Grenadier companies can be identified, as to its units, by the fact that in Martinien’s lists of killed and wounded, we find names of officers of the 45th, 63rd, 95th, and 4th Poles, none of which were present at Albuera. He accounts from these regiments for 4 officers killed and 9 wounded (45th 5 officers, 63rd 2 officers, 95th 1 officer, Poles 5 officers).

[795] Regiment of Hesse-Darmstadt about 1,000 bayonets is detached, on its way to join the Badajoz garrison.

[796] Garrison of Rodrigo (1 batt. each of 26th, 65th, 66th, Légion du Midi, and Regiment de Prusse, making 1,997 men) is included under the divisional figures above.

[797] De Grey’s brigade properly belonged to Erskine’s 2nd Cavalry Division, absent with Hill in Estremadura. But Wellington had called it up to the main army when Le Marchant’s heavy dragoons arrived at Lisbon, and sent the latter to Castello Branco, as part of Hill’s corps.

[798] The artillery and engineer returns, both British and Portuguese, are given in bulk for the whole army, including Hill’s force in Estremadura and units left at Lisbon. Distributing the numbers proportionately, the above figures would result; they cannot be far wrong.

[799] For figures of Artillery, Engineers, &c., see [note] to previous Appendix, No. XX.

[800] D troop was reduced in 1816, and re-formed in 1900, under its present designation.

[801] This company was actually commanded by Captain R. H. Birch, as Dickson was serving in the Portuguese Artillery.

Transcriber’s note

Albaracin,now Albarracín,
Albuquerque,now Alburquerque,
Alemtejo,now Alentejo,
Algesiras,now Algeciras,
Almanza,now Almansa,
Arzobispo,now El Puente del Arzobispo,
Baccelar (Manuel),now Manuel Pinto de Morais Bacelar,
Ballasteros,now Ballesteros,
Barba del Puerco,now Puerto Seguro,
Baylen,now Bailén,
Bussaco,now Buçaco,
Caamano,now Caamaño,
Caçeres,now Cáceres,
Canonge,now La Canonja,
Çaragoça,now Zaragoza,
Cattlar,now El Catllar,
Cordova,now Córdoba,
Corunna,now La Coruña,
Douro,now Duero (in Spain),
and Douro (in Portugal),
Estremadura,now Extremadura (for Spain),
and Estremadura (for Portugal),
Estremos,now Estremoz,
Golegão,now Golegã,
La Baneza,now La Bañeza
La Bispal,now La Bisbal,
Lousão,now Lousã,
Majorca,now Mallorca,
Momblanch,now Montblanch,
Niza,now Nisa,
Ona (river),now Güeña (río),
Oña (river),now Oñar (río),
Ouguella,now Ouguela,
Pampeluna,now Pamplona,
Peñacova,now Penacova,
Peniscola,now Peñíscola,
Ripol,now Ripoll,
São João de Ribiera,now São João da Ribeira,
Saragossa,now Zaragoza,
Senabria,now Sanabria,
Sta Olalla,now Santa Olalla,
Tagus (river),now Tajo (Spanish), Tejo (Portuguese),
Tondella,now Tondela,
Torienzo,now Turienzo de los Caballeros,
Truxillo,now Trujillo,
Vierzo,now El Bierzo,
Vincente,now Vicente,
Vittoria,now Vitoria,
Xeres,now Jerez,