A history of the Peninsular War, Vol. 5, Oct. 1811-Aug. 31, 1812

by Charles Oman

‘The splinters of the bombs that the French threw served the ladies of Cadiz as weights to curl their hair[100].’

The Fort of Puntales, on the easternmost point of the isthmus that links Cadiz to the Isle of Leon, felt the bombardment more severely, but was never seriously injured, and always succeeded in keeping up an effective return fire. With the artillery of those days—even when mortars of the largest calibre, specially cast in the arsenal of Seville, were used—Cadiz was safe from any real molestation.

Marshal Victor was still in command of the troops in the Lines at the end of 1811, but the Emperor gave orders for his return to France, when he ordered the Army of Andalusia to drop its organization into army-corps, and replaced them by divisions. He directed that the Marshal should set out at once, unless he was engaged in some serious enterprise at the moment that the summons arrived. This—as we shall see—chanced to be the case, and Victor was still hard at work in January, and did not leave Spain till early in April.

The third main section of Soult’s troops consisted of the two infantry and one cavalry divisions which had lately formed the 4th Corps, and had, since their first arrival in the South, been told off for the occupation of the kingdom of Granada. The whole of the coast and the inland from Malaga as far as Baza fell to their charge. The corps had been a strong one—16,000 foot and 4,000 horse—but was shortly to be reduced; the order of December 30, recalling troops for the expected Russian war, took off the whole Polish infantry division of Dembouski, 5,000 bayonets: the regiment of Lancers of the Vistula, who had won such fame by their charge at Albuera, was also requisitioned, but did not get off till the autumn. But in the last month of the old year the Poles were still present and available, and Soult was far from expecting their departure. Yet even before they were withdrawn the garrison of the kingdom of Granada was by no means too strong for the work allotted to it. The greater part of its available field-force had been drawn to the south-west, to curb the insurrection of the Serranos of the Ronda mountains, and the inroads of Ballasteros. The forces left in Granada itself and the other eastern towns were so modest that Soult protested, and apparently with truth, that he could not spare from them even a small flying column of all arms, to make the demonstration against Murcia in assistance of Suchet’s operations which the Emperor ordered him to execute. Nothing, as it will be remembered, was done in this direction during December and January, save the sending out of Pierre Soult’s raid[101], a mere affair of a single cavalry brigade.

The total force of the Andalusian army was still in December as high as 80,000 men on paper. But after deducting the sick, the garrison of Badajoz—5,000 men,—the troops of Drouet, entirely taken up with observing and containing Hill, the divisions in the Lines before Cadiz, and the obligatory garrisons of Granada, Malaga, Cordova, and other large towns, the surplus left over for active operations was very small. At the most ten or twelve thousand men, obtained by borrowing from all sides, could be formed to act as a central reserve, prepared to assist Drouet in Estremadura, Victor in the Cadiz region, or Leval in the East, as occasion might demand. During the two crises when Soult brought up his reserves to join Drouet, in the winter of 1811-12 and the spring of 1812, their joint force did not exceed 25,000 men. The Marshal was resolved to hold the complete circuit of Andalusia, the viceroyalty which brought him so much pride and profit; and so long as he persisted in this resolve he could make no offensive move, for want of a field army of competent strength.

Soult made some effort to supplement the strength of his garrisons by raising Spanish levies—both battalions and squadrons of regulars, and units for local service in the style of urban guards. The former ‘Juramentados’ never reached any great strength: they were composed of deserters, or prisoners who volunteered service in order to avoid being sent to France. Occasionally there were as many as 5,000 under arms—usually less. The men for the most part disappeared at the first opportunity, and rejoined the national army or the guerrilleros: the officers were less prone to abscond, because they were liable to be shot as traitors on returning to their countrymen. Two or three cases are recorded of such renegades who committed suicide, when they saw themselves about to fall into the hands of Spanish troops[102]. The urban guards or ‘escopeteros’ were of a little more service, for the reason that, being interested in the preservation of their own families, goods, and houses, they would often prevent the entry into their towns of any roving Spanish force which showed itself for a moment. For if they admitted any small band, which went on its way immediately, and could make no attempt to defend them on the reappearance of the enemy, they were liable to be executed as traitors by the French, and their town would be fined or perhaps sacked. Hence it was to their interest, so long as Soult continued to dominate all Andalusia, to keep the guerrilleros outside their walls. But their service was, of course, unwilling; and they were usually ready to yield on the appearance of any serious Spanish force, whose size was sufficient to excuse their submission in the eyes of Soult. Often a town was ostensibly held for King Joseph, but was privately supplying recruits, provisions, and money contributions to the national cause. Nevertheless there were real ‘Afrancesados’ in Andalusia, people who had so far committed themselves to the cause of King Joseph that they could not contemplate the triumph of the Patriots without terror. When Soult evacuated Andalusia in September 1812 several thousand refugees followed him, rather than face the vengeance of their countrymen.

During the midwinter of 1811-12 Soult’s main attention was taken up by a serious enterprise in the extreme south of his viceroyalty, which absorbed all the spare battalions of his small central reserve, and rendered it impossible for him to take the offensive in any other direction. This was the attempt to crush Ballasteros, and to capture Tarifa, which rendered his co-operation in Suchet’s Valencian campaign impossible.

General Ballasteros, as it will be remembered, had landed from Cadiz at Algeciras on September 4th, 1811, and had been much hunted during the autumn by detachments drawn both from the troops in the kingdom of Granada and those of Victor[103]. As many as 10,000 men were pressing him in October, when he had been forced to take refuge under the cannon of Gibraltar. But when want of food compelled the columns of Barrois, Sémélé, and Godinot to withdraw and to disperse, he had emerged from his refuge, had followed the retiring enemy, and had inflicted some damage on their rearguards [November 5, 1811]. His triumphant survival, after the first concentrated movement made against him, had much provoked Soult, who saw the insurrectionary movement in southern Andalusia spreading all along the mountains, and extending itself towards Malaga on the one side and Arcos on the other. The Marshal, therefore, determined to make a serious effort to crush Ballasteros, and at the same time to destroy one of the two bases from which he was wont to operate. Gibraltar was, of course, impregnable: but Tarifa, the other fortress at the southern end of the Peninsula, was not, and had proved from time to time very useful to the Spaniards. It was now their only secure foothold in southern Andalusia, and was most useful as a port of call for vessels going round from Cadiz to the Mediterranean, especially for the large flotilla of British and Spanish sloops, brigs, and gunboats, which obsessed the coast of Andalusia, and made the use of routes by the seaside almost impracticable for the enemy. Soult was at this time trying to open up communications with the Moors of Tangier, from whom he hoped to get horses for his cavalry, and oxen for the army before Cadiz. But he could not hope to accomplish anything in this way so long as Tarifa was the nest and victualling-place of privateers, who lay thick in the straits only a few miles from the coast of Morocco.

The main reason for attacking Tarifa, however, was that it had recently become the head-quarters of a small Anglo-Spanish field-force, which had been molesting the rear of the lines before Cadiz. The place had not been garrisoned in 1810, when Soult first broke into Andalusia: but a few months after General Colin Campbell, governor of Gibraltar, threw into it a small force, that same battalion of flank-companies of the 9th, 28th, 30th, and 47th Foot, which distinguished itself so much at Barrosa in the following year, when led by Colonel Brown of the 28th. This hard fighter had moved on with his regiment later in 1811, but his place had been taken by Major King of the 82nd—a one-legged officer of great energy and resolution[104]. The garrison was trifling down to October 1811, when General Campbell threw into Tarifa a brigade under Colonel Skerrett, consisting of the 2/47th and 2/87th, and some details[105], making (with the original garrison) 1,750 British troops. Three days later the Spaniards sent in from Cadiz another brigade[106] of about the same strength, under General Copons. After the French expedition against Ballasteros had failed, Copons and Skerrett went out and drove from Vejer the southernmost outposts of Victor’s corps in the Lines (November 6th). A fortnight later they marched across the hills to Algeciras, and prepared to join Ballasteros in an attack on the French troops in the direction of Ronda, but returned to Tarifa on the news that Victor was showing a considerable force at Vejer, and threatening to cut them off from their base[107]. Ballasteros by himself was a sufficient nuisance to Soult, but when his operations began to be aided by another separate force, partly composed of British troops, the Duke of Dalmatia determined that a clean sweep must be made in southern Andalusia.

The idea of capturing Tarifa did not appear by any means impracticable. This little decayed place of 6,000 souls had never been fortified in the modern style, and was surrounded by nothing more than a mediaeval wall eight feet thick, with square towers set in it at intervals. There was a citadel, the castle of Guzman El Bueno[108], but this, too, was a thirteenth-century building, and the whole place, though tenable against an enemy unprovided with artillery, was reckoned helpless against siege-guns. It is described by one of its defenders as ‘lying in a hole,’ for it was completely commanded by a range of low heights, at no greater distance than 300 yards from its northern front. In the sea, half a mile beyond it, was a rocky island, connected with the mainland by a very narrow strip of sand, which was well suited to serve as a final place of refuge for the garrison, and which had been carefully fortified. It was furnished with batteries, of which one bore on the sand-spit and the town: a redoubt (Santa Catalina) had been erected at the point where the isthmus joined the mainland: several buildings had been erected to serve as a shelter for troops, and a great series of caves (Cueva de los Moros) had been converted into casemates and store-rooms: they were perfectly safe against bombardment. In the eyes of many officers the island was the real stronghold, and the city was but an outwork to it, which might be evacuated without any serious damage to the strength of the defence. Nevertheless something had been done to improve the weak fortifications of the place: the convent of San Francisco, seventy yards from its northern point, had been entrenched and loopholed, to serve as a redoubt, and some of the square towers in the enceinte had been strengthened and built up so as to bear artillery. The curtain, however, was in all parts far too narrow and weak to allow of guns being placed upon it, and there was no glacis and practically no ditch, the whole wall to its foot being visible from the heights which overlook the city on its eastern side. There were only twenty-six guns available, and of these part belonged to the defences of the island. In the town itself there were only two heavy guns mounted on commanding towers, six field-pieces (9-pounders) distributed along the various fronts, and four mortars. When the siege actually began, the main defence was by musketry fire. It was clear from the topography of Tarifa that its northern front, that nearest to and most completely commanded by the hills outside, would be the probable point of attack by the enemy; and long before the siege began preparations were made for an interior defence. The buildings looking on the back of the ramparts were barricaded and loopholed, the narrow streets were blocked with traverses, and some ‘entanglements’ were contrived with the iron window-bars requisitioned from all the houses of the town, which served as a sort of chevaux de frise. The outer enceinte was so weak that it was intended that the main defence should be in the network of streets. Special preparations were thought out for the right-centre of the north front, where the walls are pierced by the ravine of a winter torrent of intermittent flow, called the Retiro. The point where it made its passage under the enceinte through a portcullis was the lowest place in the front, the walls sinking down as they followed the outline of the ravine. Wherefore palisades were planted outside the portcullis, entanglements behind it, and all the houses looking down on the torrent bed within the walls were prepared with loopholes commanding its course[109]. There was ample time for work, for while the first certain news that the French were coming arrived in November, the enemy did not actually appear before the walls till December 20. By that time much had been done, though the balance was only completed in haste after the siege had begun.