The formation of the French at this moment was an uneven line of four battalion columns,—counting from their left, 1/8th, 2/8th, 2/54th, 1/54th; the other two battalions were in reserve, the 1/45th behind the French battery, which was now engaged with Duncan’s guns, the provisional battalion of grenadiers more to the right, and some distance behind the 54th regiment. The whole was advancing, but slowly: the battalions in the front line were firing; the centre was a little more to the front than the wings, the 2/8th being ahead of the other battalions because (as its chef de bataillon remarks in his memoir) he only allowed his men to fire volleys by order, while the units on his right and left were using independent fire. All had suffered in the previous fight with Barnard and the Portuguese, and much needed time to re-form, which was not granted them, because the English main line charged the moment that the light troops had cleared off from its front. It is curious to note in the French memoirs that the authors all write as if they had an oppressive feeling that the superiority of numbers was against them, and that they were being led to a forlorn hope. This was caused partly by the immense extent of the British line in proportion to its depth, still more by the happy existence of the wood behind Wheatley’s brigade. It had already vomited out two lively attacking lines, and the enemy presupposed a third in reserve; nearly all the French narratives definitely say that they were attacked by three lines, while really there was only one, with the screen of light troops, which had already been used up. As to the complaint concerning inferior numbers, it is certain that Leval’s division had 3,800 men, and Wheatley’s brigade only 2,500. The only superiority of the British was that, in the artillery duel now going on to the right of the line, they had ten guns to six, and soon crushed the French battery, so that it gave no effective support to its infantry. Only one of the French battalions attempted to deploy into line—this was the 2nd of the 54th, which lay opposite the British 28th—the others kept on from first to last in column of divisions. An eye-witness (Surtees of the 95th) remarks, ‘they never got into line, nor did they ever intend to do so, I believe, but advanced in solid bodies, firing from their front[156].’
The fight, owing to the French centre being slightly advanced, began a little earlier there than on the wings, the first clash being between the column of the French 2/8th, led by Vigo-Roussillon, and the line of the 2/87th, led by that enthusiastic fighter, Major Gough. We have narratives from both of them, and each insists that he kept down the fire of his men till they were within a very short distance of the enemy—sixty yards, says Vigo-Roussillon, twenty-five, says Gough. There was then a single volley exchanged, and the French column, much the harder hit of the two, broke up. ‘As they were in column when they broke,’ says Gough, ‘they could not get away. It was therefore a scene of most dreadful carnage, and I must own my weakness; as I was in front of the regiment I was in the very middle of them, and I could not cut down one, though I might have twenty, they seemed so confounded and confused[157].’ There was indeed a fearful crowding and mêlée here, for the 1st battalion of the French 8th, yielding before the fire of the British guns and the troops to the right of Gough, the wing of the 67th, fell back sideways against their own second battalion, and became mixed in one mass with them. Thus the 87th were sweeping before them, and ploughing through, a crowd of some 1,400, or allowing for previous losses, 1,200 men, while the companies of the 67th were firing into its flank and rear. The 8th Ligne suffered worse losses than any other troops on the field that day, save Browne’s heroic flank battalion, losing about 50 per cent. of the men who went into action—726 killed, wounded, and taken out of 1,468 present. The colonel, Autié, was killed, and one of the two battalion chiefs, Lanusse, while the other, Vigo-Roussillon, was wounded and taken prisoner. The eagle was captured from the middle of the 1st battalion after a desperate struggle with the colours-guard; Ensign Keogh of the 87th, who first got hold of it, was bayonetted twice and killed; Sergeant Masterson[158] then ran the aquilifère through with his pike, dragged the eagle away, and kept it during the rest of the mêlée. This was the first eagle captured by the British during the Peninsular War, and its arrival in London was rightly made an occasion of considerable pomp and ceremony. The eagle was presented to the Prince Regent in person, who granted to the 87th the right to bear an eagle and a laurel wreath above the harp on the regimental colours and appointments, and the title of the ‘Prince of Wales’s Own Irish Regiment.’ Gough was given a brevet lieutenant-colonelcy at once, and Sergeant Masterson, who had captured the eagle, received a commission in his own regiment; he and his descendants have served in it almost throughout the nineteenth century.
The rout of the 8th Ligne was not the last triumph of the 87th on that day; driving the remains of that unfortunate corps in front of them, they came upon the battalion of the 45th Ligne, which had hitherto been standing in reserve behind the French battery, and which Leval had just ordered up to support the broken first line. Gough, with the greatest difficulty, succeeded in forming about half his scattered though victorious regiment to face this new enemy. But there was hardly a collision: all the other French units were broken by this time, and the 45th hesitated. ‘After firing until we came within about fifty paces of them,’ writes Gough, ‘they (for us fortunately) broke and fled, for had they done their duty, fatigued as my men were at the moment, they might have cut us to pieces.’ That this battalion cannot have behaved well is sufficiently shown by the casualty list—out of 700 men present it only lost 55—far the smallest proportional loss in the whole French army that day. Probably the weakness of its resistance is partly to be accounted for by the fact that it was being outflanked by the wing of the 67th, who must have been extending in this direction at the moment, prolonging the line of the 87th eastward. In its double victory the 87th lost 173 men out of 700 in the field. There remains the left wing of this fight to be dealt with. Here the French 54th, in two battalion columns, was facing the British 1/28th and the 200 Coldstreamers on their right. This was the only part of the field in which the French tried at all to manœuvre: the right battalion of the 54th began to deploy and to turn the British flank, by moving westward into the edge of the pine wood, but with little effect. We have a short account of this fight in the memoirs of Cadell of the 28th.
‘We had formed line under cover of the 95th, and then advanced to meet their right wing, which was coming down in close column—a great advantage—and here the coolness of Colonel Belson was conspicuous: he moved us up without firing a shot, close to their right battalion, which just then began to deploy. The Colonel then gave orders to fire by platoons from centre to flanks, and low; “Fire at their legs and spoil their dancing.” This was kept up for a short time, with dreadful effect. The action being now general all along the line, we twice attempted to charge. But the enemy, being double our strength (since our flank companies were away), only retired a little on each occasion. Finally, giving three cheers, we charged a third time, and succeeded: the enemy gave way and fled in every direction.’ Of all Leval’s division there now remained unbroken only the single battalion of grenadiers réunis under Colonel Meunier behind the right rear. The routed 54th fled diagonally to take cover behind it. Belson did not pursue very rapidly, and this wing of the beaten division moved off to the flank, covered by the grenadiers, and presently met the wrecks of the 8th and the 45th not far north of the Laguna del Puerco, the pool which lies beyond the heath, to the east. It may not be out of place to give the losses: the 54th, with 1,300 men present, lost 323—about one man in four. The grenadiers hardly suffered at all, never having come into close action. Of the British opposite them, the 28th, with 450 men in the field, had 86 casualties; the Coldstream companies lost 58 out of 211[159].
Just as Leval’s division arrived near the Laguna, it was joined by the wrecks of Ruffin’s, descending in disorder from the northern slope of the Cerro. It says much for the resolution of Victor that he succeeded in halting the two disorganized masses, and deployed two or three comparatively intact battalions and the ten guns which remained to him, to cover the rallying of the rest. At the same moment his cavalry, the 1st Dragoons, which had galloped away round the east side of the Cerro when Ruffin was beaten off it, came in and drew up on the right and left of the whole. It was a bold bid to secure an unmolested retreat, for no more could be hoped. Some time was available for rallying the troops, for Graham had also to get his exhausted men into order. They came up at last, Wheatley’s brigade on the left, Dilkes’s on the right, the guns in the centre. The latter were set to play on the new front of the French, which they did with great effect, the enemy being in a cramped mass. The skirmishers went forward, and a third separate engagement seemed about to begin, when a small new force intervened. This was one of the two squadrons of German hussars, which had followed the French dragoons around the back of the Cerro, not on the orders of Whittingham, who made no haste to pursue, but on those of Graham’s aide-de-camp Ponsonby, who had carried them off on his own responsibility. Coming like a whirlwind across the lower slope of the hill, this squadron upset the French squadron of the 1st Dragoons which formed Victor’s flank guard on this side, and drove it in upon the infantry. Small though the shock was, it sufficed to upset the equilibrium of the demoralized French divisions. They went off in a sudden rush, leaving behind them two more guns, and streamed across the plain towards Chiclana.
The battle was over; there was no pursuit, for the cautious Whittingham came up ten minutes too late with the rest of the cavalry, in time to see the last of the enemy disappearing in the woods. With him came up also the two infantry battalions under Cruz Murgeon, and these were the only Spanish troops that Graham saw during the battle.
It may be noted that we have hitherto not had occasion to say one word of General La Peña or his two infantry divisions since the main action began. On being informed, at the same time as Graham, of the approach of Victor from Chiclana, La Peña had no thought save to defend the isthmus by the Torre Bermeja against the approaching enemy. He drew up his own eleven battalions across it in a double or treble line, while Zayas, with those which had come out of Cadiz, watched Villatte across the Almanza creek. When Beguines appeared from the Cerro by the coast-track, he was put into the same mass, which must have risen to something like 10,000 men. Presently news came from the wood that Graham had faced about and was fighting the French. La Peña, as his own dispatch shows, concluded that the English must inevitably be beaten, and refused to stir a man to support them or to bring them off. Zayas repeatedly asked leave to march up to join Wheatley’s flank, or to cross the Almanza and to attack Villatte, but was refused permission. The first report, to the effect that Graham was driving the French back, La Peña refused to credit. It was not till the fugitives of Leval’s division were seen retreating past the head of the Almanza creek, that he could be got to accept the idea that Graham was victorious. And when pressed to join in the pursuit by Zayas, he merely said that the men were tired, and the day far spent. The reaping of the fruits of victory might be left for the morrow.
When it is remembered that La Peña was only two miles from Wheatley’s fighting-ground, and three from the Cerro, his conduct seems astounding as well as selfish. Graham’s fight lasted nearly two hours. La Peña could have ridden over, to see what was going on, in a quarter of an hour. He refused to stir, and deliberately sacrificed his allies, because he had got a comfortable, almost an impregnable, position across the narrow isthmus, and would not move out of it, whatever might happen to Graham. This timid and selfish policy was an exact repetition of his betrayal of Castaños at Tudela in 1808. With his 10,000 men he could have crushed Villatte if he had advanced on one front, or have annihilated the remnants of Ruffin and Leval, if he had chosen to act on the other.
