CHAPTER VII.
While the fuzileers were thus striving on the upper part of the hill, the cavalry and Harvey’s brigade continually advanced, and Latour Maubourg’s dragoons, battered by Lefebre’s guns, retired before them, yet still threatening the British with their right, and covering the flank of their own infantry from a charge of Lumley’s horse. Beresford, seeing that colonel Hardinge’s decision had brought on the critical moment of the battle, then endeavoured to secure a favourable result. Blake’s first line had not been at all engaged, and were ordered to move upon the village; Alten’s Germans and Hamilton’s and Collins’s Portuguese were thus rendered disposable, forming a mass of ten thousand fresh men with which the English general followed up the attack of the fuzileers and Abercrombie’s brigade, and at the same time the Spanish divisions of Zayas, Ballasteros, and España advanced. Nevertheless, so rapid was the execution of the fuzileers, that the enemy’s infantry were never attained by these reserves, which yet suffered severely; for general Ruty got the French guns altogether, and worked them with prodigious activity, while the fifth corps still made head, and, when the day was irrevocably lost, he regained the other side of the Albuera, and protected the passage of the broken infantry.
Beresford, being too hardly handled to pursue, formed a fresh line with his Portuguese, parallel to the hill from whence Soult had advanced to the attack in the morning, and where the French troops were now rallying with their usual celerity. Meanwhile the fight continued at the village, but Godinot’s division and the connecting battalion of grenadiers on that side were soon afterwards withdrawn, and the action terminated before three o’clock.
The serious fighting had endured only four hours, and in that space of time, nearly seven thousand of the allies and above eight thousand of their adversaries were struck down. Three French generals were wounded, two slain, and eight hundred soldiers so badly hurt as to be left on the field. On Beresford’s side only two thousand Spaniards, and six hundred Germans and Portuguese, were killed or wounded; hence it is plain with what a resolution the pure British fought, for they had only fifteen hundred men left standing out of six thousand! The laurel is nobly won when the exhausted victor reels as he places it on his bleeding front.
The trophies of the French were five hundred unwounded prisoners, a howitzer, and several stand of colours; the British had nothing of that kind to boast of; but the horrid piles of carcasses within their lines told, with dreadful eloquence, who were the conquerors, and all the night the rain poured down, and the river and the hills and the woods on each side, resounded with the dismal clamour and groans of dying men. Beresford, obliged to place his Portuguese in the front line, was oppressed with the number of his wounded; they far exceeded that of the sound amongst the British soldiers, and when the latter’s piquets were established, few men remained to help the sufferers. In this cruel situation he sent colonel Hardinge to demand assistance from Blake; but wrath and mortified pride were predominant in that general’s breast, and he refused; saying it was customary with allied armies for each to take care of its own men.
Morning came, and both sides remained in their respective situations, the wounded still covering the field of battle, the hostile lines still menacing and dangerous. The greater multitude had fallen on the French part, but the best soldiers on that of the allies; and the dark masses of Soult’s powerful cavalry and artillery, as they covered all his front, seemed alone able to contend again for the victory: the right of the French also appeared to threaten the Badajos road, and Beresford, in gloom and doubt, awaited another attack. On the 17th, however, the third brigade of the fourth division came up by a forced march from Jerumenha, and enabled the second division to retake their former ground between the Valverde and the Badajos roads. On the 18th, Soult retreated.
He left to the generosity of the English general several hundred men too deeply wounded to be removed; but all that could travel he had, in the night of the 17th, sent towards Seville, by the royal road, through Santa Marta, Los Santos, and Monasterio: then, protecting his movements with all his horsemen and six battalions of infantry, he filed the army, in the morning, to its right, and gained the road of Solano. When this flank march was completed, Latour Maubourg covered the rear with the heavy dragoons, and Briché protected the march of the wounded men by the royal road.
The duke of Dalmatia remained the 19th at Solano. His intention was to hold a position in Estremadura until he could receive reinforcements from Andalusia; for he judged truly that, although Beresford was in no condition to hurt Badajos, lord Wellington would come down, and that fresh combats would be required to save that fortress. On the 14th he had commenced repairing the castle of Villalba, a large structure between Almendralejos and Santa Marta, and he now continued this work; designing to form a head of cantonments, that the allies would be unable to besiege before the French army could be reinforced.
When Beresford discovered the enemy’s retreat, he despatched general Hamilton to make a show of re-investing Badajos, which was effected at day-break the 19th, but on the left bank only. Meanwhile the allied cavalry, supported by Alten’s Germans, followed the French line of retreat. Soult then transferred his head-quarters to Fuente del Maestre, and the Spanish cavalry cutting off some of his men menaced Villalba. Lord Wellington reached the field of battle the same day, and, after examining the state of affairs, desired the marshal to follow the enemy cautiously; then returning to Elvas himself, he directed the third and seventh divisions, which were already at Campo Mayor, to complete the re-investment of Badajos on the right bank.
Meanwhile Beresford, advanced by the Solano road to Almendralejos, where he found some more wounded men. His further progress was not opposed. The number of officers who had fallen in the French army, together with the privations endured, had produced despondence and discontent; the garrison at Villalba was not even disposed to maintain the castle, and under these circumstances, the duke of Dalmatia evacuated it, and continued his own retreat in the direction of Llerena, where he assumed a position on the 23d, his cavalry being near Usagre. This abandonment of the royal road to Seville was a well-considered movement. The country through which Soult passed being more fruitful and open, he could draw greater advantage from his superior cavalry; the mountains behind him were so strong he had nothing to fear from an attack; and by Belalcazar and Almaden, he could maintain a communication with La Mancha, from whence he expected Drouet’s division. The road of Guadalcanal was in his rear, by which he could draw reinforcements from Cordoba and from the fourth corps, and meanwhile the allies durst not venture to expose their left flank by marching on Monasterio.
From Llerena, a detachment was sent to drive away a Spanish Partizan corps which had cut his communications with Guadalcanal, and at the same time Latour Maubourg was directed to scour the country beyond Usagre; this led to an action; for that town, built upon a hill, and covered towards Los Santos by a river with steep and rugged banks, had only the one outlet by the bridge on that side, and when Latour Maubourg approached, Lumley retired across the river. The French light cavalry then marched along the right bank, with the intention of crossing lower down and thus covering the passage of the heavy horsemen; but before they could effect this object, general Bron rashly passed the river with two regiments of dragoons, and drew up in line just beyond the bridge. Lumley was lying close behind a rising ground, and when the French regiments had advanced a sufficient distance, Lefebre’s guns opened on them, and the third, and fourth dragoon guards, charged them in front while Madden’s Portuguese fell on their flank. They were overthrown at the first shock, and fled towards the bridge, but that being choked by the remainder of the cavalry advancing to their support, the fugitives, turned to the right and left, endeavouring to save themselves amongst some gardens situated on the banks of the river; there they were pursued and sabred until the French on the opposite side, seeing their distress, opened a fire of carbines and artillery that obliged the British to discontinue the attack. Forty killed, above a hundred wounded, and eighty prisoners were the fruits of this brilliant action of general Lumley’s, which terminated Beresford’s operations, for the miserable state to which the Regency had reduced the Portuguese army imperatively called for the marshal’s presence. General Hill, who had returned to Portugal, then re-assumed the command of the second division, amidst the eager rejoicings of the troops, and lord Wellington directed the renewed siege of Badajos in person.
OBSERVATIONS.
No general ever gained a great battle with so little increase of military reputation as marshal Beresford. His personal intrepidity and strength, qualities so attractive for the multitude, were conspicuously displayed, yet the breath of his own army withered his laurels, and his triumph was disputed by the very soldiers who followed his car. Their censures have been reiterated, without change and without abatement, even to this hour; and a close examination of his operations, while it detects many ill-founded objections, and others tainted with malice, leaves little doubt that the general feeling was right.
When he had passed the Guadiana and driven the fifth corps upon Guadalcanal, the delay that intervened, before he invested Badajos, was unjustly attributed to him: it was lord Wellington’s order, resulting from the tardiness of the Spanish generals, that paralyzed his operations. But when the time for action arrived, the want of concert in the investment, and the ill-matured attack on San Christoval belonged to Beresford’s arrangements; and he is especially responsible in reputation for the latter, because captain Squires personally represented the inevitable result, and his words were unheeded.
During the progress of the siege, either the want of correct intelligence, or a blunted judgement, misled the marshal. It was remarked that, at all times, he too readily believed the idle tales of distress and difficulties in the French armies, with which the spies generally, and the deserters always, interlarded their information. Thus he was incredulous of Soult’s enterprise, and that marshal was actually over the Morena before the orders were given for the commencing of the main attack of the castle of Badajos. However, the firmness with which Beresford resisted the importunities of the engineers to continue the siege, and the quick and orderly removal of the stores and battering-train, were alike remarkable and praiseworthy. It would have been happy if he had shewn as much magnanimity in what followed.
When he met Blake and Castaños at Valverde, the alternative of fighting or retiring behind the Guadiana was the subject of consideration. The Spanish generals were both in favour of giving battle. Blake, who could not retire the way he had arrived, without danger of having his march intercepted, was particularly earnest to fight; affirming that his troops, who were already in a miserable state, would disperse entirely if they were obliged to enter Portugal. Castaños was of the same opinion. Beresford also argued that it was unwise to relinquish the hope of taking Badajos, and ungenerous to desert the people of Estremadura; that a retreat would endanger Elvas, lay open the Alemtejo, and encourage the enemy to push his incursions further, which he could safely do, having such a fortress as Badajos with its bridge over the Guadiana, in his rear; a battle must then be fought in the Alemtejo with fewer troops and after a dispiriting retreat; there was also a greater scarcity of food in the Portuguese than in the Spanish province, and, finally, as the weather was menacing, the Guadiana might again rise before the stores were carried over, when the latter must be abandoned, or the army endangered to protect their passage.
But these plausible reasons were but a mask; the true cause why the English general adopted Blake’s proposals was the impatient temper of the British troops. None of them had been engaged in the battles under lord Wellington. At Busaco the regiments of the fourth division were idle spectators on the left, as those of the second division were on the right, while the action was in the centre. During Massena’s retreat they had not been employed under fire, and the combats of Sabugal and Fuentes Onoro had been fought without them. Thus a burning thirst for battle was general, and Beresford had not the art either of conciliating or of exacting the confidence of his troops. It is certain that if he had retreated, a very violent and unjust clamour would have been raised against him, and this was so strongly and unceremoniously represented to him, by an officer on his own staff, that he gave way. These are what may be termed the moral obstacles of war. Such men as lord Wellington or sir John Moore can stride over them, but to second-rate minds they are insuperable. Practice and study may make a good general as far as the handling of troops and the designing of a campaign, but that ascendancy of spirit which leads the wise, and controls the insolence of folly, is a rare gift of nature.
Beresford yielded with an unhappy flexibility to the clamour of the army and the representations of Blake, for it is unquestionable that the resolution to fight was unwarrantable on any sound military principle. We may pass over the argument founded upon the taking of Badajos, because neither the measures nor the means of the English general promised the slightest chance of success; the siege would have died away of itself in default of resources to carry it on. The true question to consider was, not whether Estremadura should be deserted or Badajos abandoned, but whether lord Wellington’s combinations and his great and well considered design for the deliverance of the Peninsula, should be ruined and defaced at a blow. To say that the Alemtejo could not have been defended until the commander-in-chief arrived from the north with reinforcements was mere trifling. Soult, with twenty or even thirty thousand men, durst not have attempted the siege of Elvas in the face of twenty-four thousand men such as Beresford commanded. The result of the battle of Fuentes Onoro was known in the English and in the French camps, before Beresford broke up from Badajos, hence he was certain that additional troops would soon be brought down to the Guadiana; indeed, the third and seventh divisions were actually at Campo Mayor the 23d of May. The danger to the Alemtejo was, therefore, slight, and the necessity of a battle being by no means apparent, it remains to analyze the chances of success.
Soult’s numbers were not accurately known, but it was ascertained that he had not less than twenty thousand veteran troops. He had also a great superiority of cavalry and artillery, and the country was peculiarly suitable for these arms; the martial character of the man was also understood. Now the allies could bring into the field more of infantry by ten thousand than the French, but they were of various tongues, and the Spanish part ill armed, starving, and worn out with fatigue, had been repeatedly and recently defeated by the very troops they were going to engage. The French were compact, swift of movement, inured to war, used to act together, and under the command of one able and experienced general. The allied army was unwieldy, each nation mistrusting the other, and the whole without unity of spirit, or of discipline, or of command. On what, then, could marshal Beresford found his hopes of success? The British troops. The latter were therefore to be freely used. But was it a time to risk the total destruction of two superb divisions and to encounter a certain and heavy loss of men, whose value he knew so well when he calculated upon them alone for victory in such circumstances?
To resolve on battle was, however, easier than to prepare for it with skill. Albuera, we have seen, was the point of concentration. Colonel Colborne’s brigade did not arrive until the 14th, and these was no certainty that it could arrive before the enemy did. Blake did not arrive until three in the morning of the 16th. The fourth division not until six o’clock. Kemmis with three fine British regiments, and Maddens cavalry, did not come at all. These facts prove that the whole plan was faulty, it was mere accident that a sufficient force to give battle was concentrated. Beresford was too late, and the keeping up the investment of Badajos, although laudable in one sense, was a great error; it was only an accessary, and yet the success of the principal object was made subservient to it. If Soult, instead of passing by Villa Franca, in his advance, had pushed straight on from Los Santos to Albuera, he would have arrived the 15th, when Beresford had not much more than half his force in position; the point of concentration would then have been lost, and the allies scattered in all directions. If the French had even continued their march by Solano instead of turning upon Albuera, they must inevitably have communicated with Badajos, unless Beresford had fought without waiting for Blake, and without Kemmis’s brigade. Why, then, did the French marshal turn out of the way to seek a battle, in preference to attaining his object without one? and why did he neglect to operate by his right or left until the unwieldy allied army should separate or get into confusion, as it inevitably would have done? Because the English general’s dispositions were so faulty that no worse error could well be expected from him, and Soult had every reason to hope for a great and decided victory; a victory which would have more than counterbalanced Massena’s failure. He knew that only one half of the allied force was at Albuera on the 15th, and when he examined the ground, every thing promised the most complete success.
Marshal Beresford had fixed upon and studied his own field of battle above a month before the action took place, and yet occupied it in such a manner as to render defeat almost certain; his infantry were not held in hand, and his inferiority in guns and cavalry was not compensated for by entrenchments. But were any other proofs of error wanting, this fact would suffice, he had a greater strength of infantry on a field of battle scarcely four miles long, and three times the day was lost and won, the allies being always fewest in number at the decisive point. It is true that Blake’s conduct was very perplexing; it is true that general William Stewart’s error cost one brigade, and thus annihilated the command of colonel Colborne, a man capable of turning the fate of a battle even with fewer troops than those swept away from him by the French cavalry: but the neglect of the hill beyond the Albuera, fronting the right of the position, was Beresford’s own error and a most serious one; so also were the successive attacks of the brigades, and the hesitation about the fourth division. And where are we to look for that promptness in critical moments which marks the great commander? It was colonel Hardinge that gave the fourth division and Abercrombie’s brigade orders to advance, and it was their astounding valour in attack, and the astonishing firmness of Houghton’s brigade in defence that saved the day; the person of the general-in-chief was indeed seen every where, a gallant soldier! but the mind of the great commander was seen no where.
Beresford remained master of the field of battle, but he could not take Badajos, that prize was the result of many great efforts, and many deep combinations by a far greater man: neither did he clear Estremadura, for Soult maintained positions from Llerena to Usagre. What then did he gain? The power of simulating a renewal of the siege, and holding his own cantonments on the left bank of the Guadiana; I say simulating, for, if the third and seventh divisions had not arrived from Beira, even the investment could not have been completed. These illusive advantages he purchased at the price of seven thousand men. Now lord Wellington fought two general and several minor actions, with a smaller loss, and moreover turned Massena and seventy thousand men out of Portugal!
Such being the fruit of victory, what would have been the result of defeat? There was no retreat, save by the temporary bridge of Jerumenha, but, had the hill on the right been carried in the battle, the Valverde road would have been in Soult’s possession, and the line of retreat cut; and, had it been otherwise, Beresford, with four thousand victorious French cavalry at his heels, could never have passed the river. Back, then, must have come the army from the north, the Lines of Lisbon would have been once more occupied—a French force fixed on the south of the Tagus—Spain ruined—Portugal laid prostrate—England in dismay. Could even the genius of lord Wellington have recovered such a state of affairs? And yet, with these results, the terrible balance hung for two hours, and twice trembling to the sinister side, only yielded at last to the superlative vigour of the fuzileers. The battle should never have been fought. The siege of Badajos could not have been renewed without reinforcements, and, with them, it could have been renewed without an action, or at least without risking an unequal one.
But would even the bravery of British soldiers have saved the day, at Albuera, if the French general had not also committed great errors. His plan of attack and his execution of it, up to the moment when the Spanish line fell back in disorder, cannot be too much admired; after that, the great error of fighting in dense columns being persisted in beyond reason, lost the fairest field ever offered to the arms of France. Had the fifth corps opened out while there was time to do so, that is, between the falling back of the Spaniards and the advance of Houghton’s brigade, what on earth could have saved Beresford from a total defeat? The fire of the enemy’s columns alone destroyed two-thirds of his British troops; the fire of their lines would have swept away all!
It has been said that Latour Maubourg and Godinot did not second Soult with sufficient vigour; the latter certainly did not display any great energy, but the village was maintained by Alten’s Germans, who were good and hardy troops, and well backed up by a great body of Portuguese. Latour Maubourg’s movements seem to have been objected to without reason. He took six guns, sabred many Spaniards, and overthrew a whole brigade of the British, without ceasing to keep in check their cavalry. He was, undoubtedly, greatly superior in numbers, but general Lumley handled the allied squadrons with skill and courage, and drew all the advantage possible from his situation, and, in the choice of that situation, none can deny ability to marshal Beresford. The rising ground behind the horsemen, the bed of the Aroya in their front, the aid of the horse-artillery, and the support of the fourth division, were all circumstances of strength so well combined that nothing could be better, and they dictated Latour Maubourg’s proceedings, which seem consonant to true principles. If he had charged in mass, under the fire of Lefebre’s guns, he must have been thrown into confusion in passing the Aroya at the moment when the fourth division, advancing along the slopes, would have opened a musketry on his right flank; Lumley could then have charged, or retired up the hill, according to circumstances. In this case, great loss might have been sustained, and nothing very decisive could have accrued to the advantage of the French, because no number of cavalry, if unsustained by infantry and artillery, can make a serious impression against the three arms united.
On the other hand, a repulse might have been fatal not only to himself but to the French infantry on the hill, as their left would have been open to the enterprises of the allied cavalry. If Latour Maubourg had stretched away to his own left, he would, in like manner, have exposed the flank of Soult’s infantry, and his movements would have been eccentric, and contrary to sound principles; and, (in the event of a disaster to the corps on the hill, as really happened,) destructive to the safety of the retreating army. By keeping in mass on the plain, and detaching squadrons from time to time, as favourable opportunities offered for partial charges, he gained, as we have seen, great advantages during the action, and kept his troopers well in hand for the decisive moment; finally, he covered the retreat of the beaten infantry. Still it may be admitted that, with such superior numbers, he might have more closely pressed Lumley.
When Soult had regained the hills at the other side of the Albuera, the battle ceased, each side being, as we have seen, so hardly handled that neither offered to renew the fight. Here was the greatest failure of the French commander; he had lost eight thousand men, but he had still fifteen thousand under arms, and his artillery and his cavalry were comparatively untouched. On the side of the allies, only fifteen hundred British infantry were standing; the troops were suffering greatly from famine; the Spaniards had been feeding on horseflesh, and were so extenuated by continual fatigue and misery, that, for several days previous to the battle, they had gone over in considerable numbers even to the French, hoping thus to get food: these circumstances should be borne in mind, when reflecting on their conduct in the battle; under such a commander as Blake, and, while enduring such heavy privations, it was a great effort of resolution, and honourable to them that they fought at all. Their resistance feeble, when compared to the desperate valour of the British, was by no means weak in itself or infirm; nor is it to be wondered at that men so exhausted and so ill-managed should have been deaf to the call of Beresford, a strange general, whose exhortations they probably did not understand. When the fortune of the day changed they followed the fuzileers with alacrity, and at no period did they give way with dishonour.
Nevertheless, all circumstances considered, they were not and could not be equal to a second desperate struggle, a renewed attack on the 17th, would have certainly ended in favour of the French; and so conscious was Beresford of this, that, on the evening of the 16th, he wrote to lord Wellington, avowing that he anticipated a certain and ruinous defeat the next day. The resolution with which he maintained the position notwithstanding, was the strongest indication of military talent he gave during the whole of his operations; had Soult only persisted in holding his position with equal pertinacity, Beresford must have retired. It was a great and decided mistake of the French marshal not to have done so. There is nothing more essential in war than a confident front; a general should never acknowledge himself vanquished, for the front line of an army always looks formidable, and the adversary can seldom see the real state of what is behind. The importance of this maxim is finely indicated in Livy, where he relates that, after a drawn battle, a god called out in the night, the Etruscans had lost one man more than the Romans! Hereupon the former retired, and the latter, remaining on the field, gathered all the fruits of a real victory.