Leval therefore was able to rally his division at leisure, upon the two Polish battalions which formed its supports. He had lost in the three-quarters of an hour during which he was engaged some six or seven hundred men. The battle was raging by now all down the line, and when the Germans were re-formed, they received orders to advance for a second time, to cover the flank of Sebastiani’s division, now hotly engaged with Sherbrooke’s right brigades. Neglecting chronological considerations, in order to finish the narrative of the action in this quarter, it may suffice to say that Leval’s second attack was made at about 4 o’clock in the afternoon: it was not delivered with so much energy as had been shown in his first. It encountered the same obstacles, and could not surmount them. Once more the advance rolled up through the olive groves, and reached the clearing in front of the battery. Again the head of the attacking masses withered away under the musketry fire and the salvos from the English and Spanish guns, and the whole finally went to the rear in disorder. Campbell, in repelling this attack, used his second brigade as well as his first, and pushed the enemy further back than he had done during the earlier fighting: the Spaniards also came out of their line and continued to flank the retreating enemy with two or three battalions and a half-battery[661]. As the Hessians and Frankforters in their front began to give way, they were assailed by one of Henestrosa’s cavalry regiments, the Regimiento del Rey, which charged with great spirit, and cut up many men before they could form square. The bulk of the two battalions, however, clubbed together in a mass and retired into the woods, defending themselves as best they could. The victorious Spanish horsemen while following them, came upon a second French battery which (like that captured by the British brigade on their left) was being brought forward by a narrow lane between two olive groves. They cut down the gunners and took four pieces, which were dragged back into the redoubt. This was by far the best piece of work done by Spanish cavalry during the whole of the first years of the war, and did much to atone for the panic of the previous night in the eyes of the British observers upon the right wing.
The repulse of Leval’s division was complete, and its wrecks, once more rallied upon the two Polish battalions in their rear, drew back into the plain, and were completely put out of action. In this attack they lost not only the four guns taken by the Spaniards, but seven more pieces of artillery. Convinced that he could not carry the Pajar de Vergara position unless he could bring guns to bear upon the redoubt, and check the ravages of its salvos of canister, Leval had tried to push his remaining two batteries into the firing line. Again, as in the first attack, they were left helpless when the infantry broke, and became the prey of the pursuers. It would seem that he lost on this day seventeen guns in all[662]. The total of the casualties in his division were 1,007, nearly a quarter of its force: the colonels of the Baden and Frankfort regiments and the major commanding the Dutch battery had been left on the field[663]. Campbell had suffered on a very different scale—he had only lost 236 men, and it is improbable that the Spaniards on his right had more than 150 or 180 casualties, since they only fought with one wing of the attacking force. Wellesley, not without reason, gave the highest praise in his dispatch to Campbell, for the admirable and cautious defence which he had made. The management of the 4th Division, indeed, contrasted strongly with that of the troops to its left, where Sherbrooke’s brigades—as we shall see—risked the loss of the battle by their rash pursuit of the enemy, far beyond the limits of the position which had been given them to defend.
We must now turn to their doings—the most desperate fighting that occurred during the day. Sherbrooke’s eight battalions had to endure the preliminary cannonade for more than half an hour after Campbell’s men were closely engaged with the enemy. It was not till three o’clock that the two French divisions opposed to them began to descend towards the Portiña, in an orderly and imposing array. Each of the French generals had drawn up his twelve battalions in two lines—the front line deployed in column of divisions, the supporting line in solid column of battalions. But there was this difference in their arrangements, that Lapisse had placed his brigades one behind the other, while Sebastiani had preferred to work his brigades side by side, each with one regiment in first and one in second line. The former therefore had Laplannes’ brigade (16th Léger and 45th Line) opposed to Low’s and Langwerth’s regiments of the German Legion and Cameron’s 2/83rd. The latter had the 28th of Rey’s and the 58th of Liger-Bellair’s brigades ranged over against the 1/61st and the British Foot-Guards. When the cannonade of the French batteries ceased, the twelve battalions of their first line, preceded by the usual swarm of tirailleurs, moved down toward the Portiña. They crossed the brook and pressed on towards the red line that stood awaiting their approach, driving before them with ease the comparatively insignificant screen of light troops that lay in front of the British centre. Sherbrooke, who was responsible for the whole line of the defence, since his division exactly covered the ground on which the French attack was delivered, had issued orders that the troops were not to fire till the enemy came within fifty yards of them, and that they were then to deliver a single volley and charge. This programme was executed with precise obedience: though suffering severely from the enemy’s musketry, the division held in its fire till the hostile columns were close upon them, and then opened with one tremendous discharge which crashed out simultaneously along the whole eight battalions. The leading ranks of Lapisse’s and Sebastiani’s front line went down in swathes,—one French witness says that the infantry of the regiments of the 4th Corps lost a third of their numbers in less than ten minutes. When the charge which Sherbrooke had ordered followed close upon the blasting musketry fire, the enemy retired in disorder and fell back beyond the Portiña.
The divisional general had apparently forgotten to caution his colonels against the danger of carrying their advance too far. Instead of contenting themselves with chasing the broken enemy as far as the brook, and then returning to their positions, the four brigades of the 1st division all crossed the water and pursued the French into their own ground; the German Legion on the left actually began to push them up the lower slopes of the Cerro de Cascajal, while the Guards on the right went forward far into the rolling plain in front of them. Cameron halted his two battalions not far beyond the Portiña; but on each side of him the pursuit was pressed with reckless energy, and without any remembrance of the fact that the enemy had strong reserves.
Thus it came to pass that a disaster followed the first success of Sherbrooke’s division. Both the Germans on the left and the Guards on the right found themselves in face of intact troops, behind whom the broken front line of the enemy took refuge. They were in no condition to begin a new combat, for they were in complete disorder, and there was a broad gap on the inner flank of each brigade, owing to the fact that Cameron had halted and refused to push forward into danger. Hence came a perilous crisis: the French reserves moved forward, the guns on the Cascajal height enfiladed the German Legion, while two regiments of Latour-Maubourg’s dragoons moved in upon the right flank of the Guards. The whole of the six battalions that had joined in the reckless advance were forced to recoil, fighting desperately but losing ground every moment, and pressed into clumps and masses that presented no trace of their former line of battle. When they fell back to the point where Cameron had stopped, the 61st and 83rd became involved in their retreat, and were forced to repass the Portiña in their company. The French followed with shouts of victory, pushing their advantage to the utmost and slaughtering the disordered battalions by hundreds. The disaster was worst on the left, where half the strength of the 2nd Line Battalion of the German Legion—387 men—was destroyed in twenty minutes, and the 5th battalion of that same corps lost over 100 prisoners. The Guards suffered almost as heavily: out of their 2,000 men 611 went down killed or wounded: but they left no prisoners behind.
It seemed that the day might well be lost, for Wellesley’s reserves were small. Such as they were, however, they were at once put into action. Mackenzie brought forward his brigade to the ground which the Guards had originally covered, and drew them up to withstand the rush of Sebastiani’s division—the 2/24th on the right, the 2/31st on the left, with the 1/45th between them. The disordered household troops passed through their intervals, and rallied behind them with splendid promptness: ‘their good humour and determination after such dreadful losses’ says an eye-witness, ‘was shown by their giving a loud hurrah as they took up their new ground[664].’ At the same time Cotton brought up the single brigade of light cavalry which was in reserve, and drew them up on Mackenzie’s right, so as to cover his flank. Sebastiani came up with great boldness against the fresh front thus presented to him, and for twenty minutes there was a furious musketry battle in the British right centre. Mackenzie himself fell, and his three battalions lost 632 men out of about 2,000: but they held their own, and finally the enemy recoiled. They were helped somewhat in their inclination to retreat by a charge of the Light Dragoons upon the flank of their left-hand regiment, the 75th, which had about 150 men sabred[665]. Thus on this point the battle was saved: the main credit must go to Mackenzie’s brigade, which has never received the praise that was its due, for its general was killed, and thus no report from the 3rd division was sent in to Wellesley, who omitted all mention of its doings in his Talavera dispatch[666]. It is never too late to do homage to forgotten valour, and to call attention to a neglected feat of arms. The services of the 24th, 31st, and 45th saved the day for Britain[667].
Sebastiani therefore drew back terribly mauled: his division had lost all its four colonels, seven of its twelve battalion-chiefs, seventy other officers and 2,100 rank and file—including some sixty prisoners. There was no more fight left in them. They recoiled into the plain, and drew up at last not far from the wrecks of Leval’s division, a full mile beyond the Portiña.
Meanwhile, however great may have been the danger in the British right-centre, that in the left-centre was even greater. Cameron’s, Low’s, and Langwerth’s brigades were all in the most desperate position: the former, not having pushed so far to the front as the four German battalions, had suffered least of the three—though it had lost 500 men out of 1,400. But the Legionary troops were in far worse case—Langwerth had been killed, and his brigade was reduced from 1,300 to 650 bayonets—just fifty per cent. of the men had been lost. Low had gone into action with only 950 rank and file, owing to the heavy casualty-list of the preceding night. Of these he now lost 350, including 150 made prisoners in the disorderly retreat down the slope of the Cerro de Cascajal. That these troops ever rallied and made head at all, when they had recrossed the Portiña, is much to their credit.
The situation was saved by Wellesley’s own prescience. The moment that he saw the rash attack on the French line to which Sherbrooke had committed himself, he looked round for supports which might be utilized to stay the inevitable reaction that must follow. Mackenzie’s brigade was available on the right-centre, and was used as we have seen. But there were no infantry reserves behind the left-centre: it was necessary to send down troops from the Cerro de Medellin. Villatte was then threatening its front, Ruffin was marching to turn its northern flank, and Wellesley did not dare to detach a whole brigade from the key of the position. He took, however, Richard Stewart’s strongest battalion, the 1/48th under Colonel Donnellan (which had still over 700 bayonets in line even after its losses in the morning) and sent it at full speed down the southern slope of the Cerro. It arrived in time to take position on the old ground of the British line, at the moment that the retreating masses came rolling back across the Portiña. If the 48th had been carried away in the general backward movement, the day would have been lost: but the regiment stood firm, and allowed Cameron’s and Langwerth’s troops to pass by its flanks and form up in its rear. While it was holding back Lapisse’s central advance, the defeated brigades rallied and re-formed with admirable celerity, and the battle was restored. Here, as further to the right, the fighting now resolved itself into a furious musketry-combat between enemies both of whom were now spent and weakened by their previous exertions[668]. In such a duel the line had always the advantage over the column in the end. The French, when once brought to a standstill by the 1/48th, lost their élan, and stood heaped together in disorderly masses, keeping up a rolling fire but gaining no ground. Howorth turned upon them the batteries on the Cerro de Medellin, which enfiladed their flank and added to their confusion. General Lapisse himself was killed at this moment, as he was trying to urge on his men to a final advance. It was probably, however, not his death—on which all the French accounts lay great stress—but rather the defeat of Sebastiani’s division on their immediate right which finally shook the morale of the French regiments, and induced them to move back, first at a slow pace, then in undisguised retreat. The shattered remnants of the German Legion and of the 1/48th, 1/61st, and 2/83rd were in no condition to follow. Seldom have two combatants so thoroughly mauled each other as had the twelve French and the seven allied battalions which fought in this part of the field. Of the 6,800 men of Lapisse’s division, the general, sixty-nine other officers, and 1,700 men were hors de combat. Of 4,300[669] British and German troops opposed to them almost exactly the same number had been lost—a general (Langwerth), seventy-seven officers, and 1,616 men. That the smaller force should ever have held its ground after losing more than a third of its number is almost miraculous. There was no such a victory as this during the whole war, save Albuera.
While the main stress of the battle had been rolling across the lower slopes, above the middle course of the Portiña, matters had been comparatively quiet on the Cerro de Medellin. Victor, it will be remembered, had ordered that Villatte was to make no serious attack on the height until the divisions to his left had made some impression upon the British centre. But Lapisse and Sebastiani, in spite of their temporary successes, had never broken into Wellesley’s position. The assault on the Cerro therefore was never made, though a furious artillery fire was kept up against its garrison throughout the afternoon. The handful of British guns upon the crest could make no adequate reply: hence the three brigades of Tilson, Richard Stewart, and Donkin were suffering very serious losses from the long cannonade. Wellesley had made them shelter themselves, as far as was possible, behind the sky-line. Nevertheless the storm of shot and shell that beat upon the position was not without effect. In Donkin’s brigade no one, save the light companies skirmishing along the lower slopes, discharged a musket that afternoon, yet the casualties in its ranks were no less than 195[670]. Hill’s two brigades, though better covered, had still many killed and wounded. That the return-fire of the British artillery and skirmishers was not altogether ineffective is shown by the fact that the two regiments of Villatte’s second brigade, which held the opposite slope, lost 185 men, and even the squadrons of Beaumont in its rear had a few troopers disabled[671]. Nevertheless the fighting in this part of the field was not only indecisive but comparatively innocuous to both sides, when compared with the awful slaughter that was going on to their right.