Battle of Castalla. (April, 1813.)
Suchet’s dispositions were slowly made, as if he feared to commence. A mountain spur, jutting from the Sierra between Whittingham and the troops from Biar, hid two-thirds of the allies from his view, and he first sent an exploring column of infantry towards Castalla, to turn the intercepting spur and discover all the conditions of the position; when that was effected his cavalry closed towards the baranco. Then he formed two powerful columns of attack and sent them against Whittingham and Adam on each side of the spur, retaining a reserve on his own ridge, and keeping his exploring column towards Castalla to meet any sally from that point.
The ascent against Whittingham was so ruggedly steep, and the upper part so intrenched, that the battle resolved itself there at once into a stationary skirmish of light troops; but on the other side of the spur the French mounted the height, slowly indeed and with many skirmishers, yet so resolutely, that it was evident good fighting only would send them down again. Their light troops, spreading over the face of the Sierra and in some places attaining the summit, were met and held in play by the Anglo-Sicilian troops with changing fortune; but where the main column came on the 27th Regiment there was a terrible crash of battle, and preceded by a singular encounter. For an abrupt declination of ground enabled the French to halt and re-form for the decisive assault, out of fire, yet close to that regiment which was by order lying down in expectation of the charge. Suddenly a grenadier officer, rising alone to the upper ground, challenged Waldron the captain of the 27th Grenadiers to single combat; he, an agile Irishman of boiling courage, instantly leaped forward to the duel, and the hostile lines though ready to charge awaited the result. Rapidly the champions’ swords clashed and glittered in the sun, but Waldron cleft his adversary’s head in twain, and the 27th springing up with a deafening shout charged and sent the French, maugre their numbers and courage, down the mountain side, covering it with their dead and wounded. It was a glorious exploit, erroneously attributed in the despatch to Colonel Adam, though entirely conducted by the colonel of the regiment, Reeves.
Suchet seeing his principal column thus broken, and having the worst of the fight in other parts, made two secondary attacks with his reserve to cover a rally, yet failed in both and his army was thus separated in three parts without connection; for the column beaten by Reeves was in great confusion at the foot of the Sierra, the exploring column was on the left, and the cavalry beyond the baranco, the only passage across it being commanded by the allies. A vigorous sally from Castalla, and a general advance, would then have compelled the French-infantry to fall back upon Biar in confusion before the cavalry could come to their assistance, and the victory would have been completed; but Murray, who had remained during the whole action behind Castalla, first gave Suchet time to rally and retire in order towards the pass of Biar, and then gradually passing out Clinton’s and Roche’s divisions by the right of the town, with a tedious pedantic movement, changed his own front, keeping his left at the foot of the heights, and extending his right, covered by the cavalry, towards another sierra called Onil: General Mackenzie however, moving out by the left of Castalla with four battalions and eight guns, followed the enemy without orders.
Suchet had by this time plunged into the pass with his infantry, cavalry and tumbrils, in one mass, leaving the rear-guard of three battalions and eight guns to cover the passage; these being pressed by Mackenzie and sharply cannonaded, turned and offered battle, answering gun for gun; but they were heavily crushed by the English shot, the clatter of musketry commenced, and one well-directed vigorous charge would have overturned and driven them in mass upon the other troops, then wedged in the narrow defile. Mackenzie was willing, but his advance had been directed by the quartermaster-general Donkin, not by Murray, and he was now compelled by the latter, despite of all remonstrances and the indignant cries of the troops, to retreat! Suchet, thus relieved from ruin by his adversary, immediately occupied a position across the defile, having his flanks on the ridges above; and though Murray finally sent some light companies to attack his left he retained his position until night.
This battle, in which the allies had about seventeen thousand men of all arms, the French about fifteen thousand, was, Suchet says, brought on against his wish by the impetuosity of his light troops, and that he lost only eight hundred men. His statement is confirmed by Vacani the Italian historian. Murray affirmed that it was a pitched battle, and that the French lost above three thousand men. In favour of Suchet’s version it may be remarked, that neither the place, nor the time, nor the mode of attack was answerable to his talents and experience in war, if he had really intended a pitched battle; and though the fight was strong at the principal point, it was scarcely possible to have so many as three thousand killed and wounded. Eight hundred seems too few, because the loss of the victorious troops, with all advantages of ground, was more than six hundred. This however is certain; if Suchet lost three thousand men, which would have been at least a fourth of his infantry, he must have been so disabled, that what with the narrow defile of Biar in the rear, and the distance of his cavalry in the plain, to have escaped at all was extremely discreditable to Murray’s generalship.