The critical moment of the day was the short space of time when Wellington was surveying the French army, from the height where Leith’s men were lying prostrate behind the crest, above the village of Arapiles, under a distant but not very effective artillery fire. The whole plateau opposite was very visible: Maucune could be seen halted and in line, with much artillery on his flank, but no infantry force near—there was half a mile between him and Bonnet. Thomières was still pushing away to his left, already separated by some distance from Maucune. Clausel had apparently halted after the end of his march out of the woods. Foy and Ferey were at least two miles off to the French right. The enemy, in short, were in no solid battle order, and were scattered on an immense arc, which enveloped on both sides the obtuse angle en potence formed by the main body of the allied army. From Foy’s right to Thomières’s left there was length but no depth. The only reserves were the troops imperfectly visible in the woods behind the Great Arapile—where lay Brennier in first line, and Sarrut who was now nearing Marmont’s artillery-park and baggage. Their strength might be guessed from the fact that Marmont was known to have eight infantry divisions, and that six were clearly visible elsewhere. Wellington’s determination was suddenly taken, to turn what had been intended for a defensive into an offensive battle. Seeing the enemy so scattered, and so entirely out of regular formation, he would attack him with the whole force that he had in position west of the little Arapile, before Marmont could get into order. Leith, Cole, and Pack in front line, supported by the 6th and 7th Divisions in second line, and with Bradford, España, and Stapleton Cotton’s cavalry covering their right flank in a protective échelon, should cross the valley and fall upon Bonnet, Maucune, Clausel, and Thomières. Meanwhile Pakenham and D’Urban, being in a hidden position from which they could easily outflank Thomières, should ascend the western end of the plateau, get across the head of his marching column, and drive it in upon Maucune, whom Leith would be assailing at the same moment. Pakenham’s turning movement was the most delicate part of the plan; wherefore Wellington resolved to start it himself. He rode like the wind across the ground behind the heights, past Las Torres and Penilla, and appeared all alone before D’Urban’s Portuguese squadrons. It was only some time later that first Colonel Delancey and then others of his staff, quite outdistanced, came dropping in with blown horses. The orders to D’Urban were short and clear: Pakenham was about to attack the western end of the plateau where Thomières was moving—near the Pico de Miranda. It would be D’Urban’s duty to cover his right flank[534]. A minute later Wellington was before the 3rd Division, which had just received orders to stand to its arms.
‘The officers had not taken their places in the column, but were in a group together, in front of it. As Lord Wellington rode up to Pakenham every eye was turned towards him. He looked paler than usual; but, notwithstanding the sudden change he had just made in the disposition of his army, he was quite unruffled in his manner, as if the battle to be fought was nothing but a field-day. His words were few and his orders brief. Tapping Pakenham on the shoulder, he said, “Edward, move on with the 3rd Division, take those heights in your front—and drive everything before you.” “I will, my lord,” was the laconic reply of the gallant Sir Edward. A moment after, Lord Wellington was galloping on to the next division, to give (I suppose) orders to the same effect, and in less than half an hour the battle had commenced[535].’ The time was about a quarter to four in the afternoon.
Having set Pakenham and D’Urban in motion, Wellington rode back to the ground of the 5th Division, sending on his way orders for Arentschildt to leave the cavalry reserve, and join D’Urban with the five squadrons that remained of Victor Alten’s brigade[536]. Bradford, España, and Cotton at the same time were directed to come forward to Leith’s right flank. On reaching the hilltop behind the village of Arapiles, the Commander-in-Chief gave his orders to Leith: the 5th Division was to advance downhill and attack Maucune across the valley, as soon as Bradford’s Portuguese should be close up to support his right, and as Pakenham’s distant movement should become visible. Wellington then rode on to give the corresponding orders to Cole, more to the left[537].
The 5th Division thereupon sent out its light companies in skirmishing line, and came up to the crest: the two neighbouring brigades of the 4th Division followed suit, and then Pack’s Portuguese, opposite the Greater Arapile. Considerable loss was suffered in all these corps from the French artillery fire, when the battalions rose from their lying posture behind the crest and became visible. Some thirty or forty minutes elapsed between Wellington’s arrival on the scene and the commencement of the advance: the delay was caused by the necessity for waiting for Bradford, who was coming up as fast as possible from Las Torres. The attack did not begin till about 4.40 p.m.
By the time that Leith and Cole came into action the French army had been deprived of its chief. Somewhere between three and four o’clock in the afternoon[538], and certainly nearer the latter than the former hour, Marmont had been severely wounded. According to his own narrative he had begun to be troubled by seeing Maucune pressing in too close to the village of Arapiles, and Thomières passing on too far to the left, and had been roused to considerable vexation by getting a message from the former that he observed that the troops in front of him were retiring, and therefore would ask leave to support his voltigeurs and attack the British position with his whole division. Marmont says that it was his wish to stop Maucune from closing that induced him to prepare to depart from his eyrie on the Great Arapile, and to descend to take charge of his left wing. Be this as it may, there is no doubt that he was starting to climb down and mount his horse, when a shell from one of Dyneley’s two guns on the British Arapile burst near him, and flung him to the ground with a lacerated right arm, and a wound in his side which broke two ribs[539]. He himself says that there was nothing irremediable in the state of his army at the moment that he was disabled. His critic, Foy, held otherwise. ‘The Duke of Ragusa,’ he wrote, ‘insinuated that the battle of the 22nd was lost because, after his own wounding, there was a gap in the command, anarchy, and disorder. But it was the Duke who forced on the battle, and that contrary to the advice of General Clausel. His left was already beaten when he was disabled: already it was impossible either to refuse a battle or to give it a good turn. It was only possible to attenuate the disaster—and that was what Clausel did[540].’ Foy also insinuates that Maucune’s advance, at least in its early stages, was consonant with Marmont’s intentions. ‘He had made his arrangements for a decisive blow: when the English were seen to take up their position, the heads of the columns were turned to the left, so as to occupy the elevations which dominate the plain, and swell up one after another. The occupation of one led to the temptation to seize the next, and so by advance after advance the village of Arapiles was at last reached. Maucune’s division actually held it for some minutes. Nevertheless we had not yet made up our minds to deliver battle, and the necessary dispositions for one had not been made. My division was still occupying the plateau of Calvarisa, with the 3rd and 4th Divisions (Ferey and Sarrut) and the dragoons supporting me in the rear. Here, then, was a whole section of the army quite out of the fight: and the other divisions were not well linked together, and could be beaten one after the other.’
Foy is certainly correct in asserting that, at the moment of the Marshal’s wound, he himself and Ferey were too far off to be brought up in time to save Maucune, and that Bonnet, Maucune, Clausel, and Thomières were in no solid connexion with each other. This indeed was what made Wellington deliver his attack. It is probable that the Marshal’s wound occurred just about the moment (3.45) when Pakenham and D’Urban were being directed by Wellington to advance. Even if it fell a trifle earlier, the French left wing was already too dislocated to have time to get into a good position before it was attacked. Marmont, it must be confessed, rather gave away his case when, in his reply to Napoleon’s angry query why he had fought a battle on the 22nd, he answered that he had not intended to deliver a general action at all—it had been forced on him by Wellington[541]. If so, he was responsible for being caught by his adversary with his army strung out in such a fashion that it had a very poor chance of avoiding disaster. If it be granted that the unlucky shell had never struck him, it would not have been in ‘a quarter of an hour[542]’ (as he himself pretends), nor even in a whole hour, that he could have rearranged a line six miles long[543], though he might have stopped Maucune’s attack and Thomières’s flank march in a much shorter time.
On Marmont’s fall, the command of the army of Portugal fell to Bonnet, the senior general of division. He was within a few yards of his wounded chief, since his division was holding the Great Arapile, and took up the charge at once. But it was an extraordinary piece of ill-luck for the French that Bonnet also was wounded within an hour, so that the command passed to Clausel before six o’clock. As Foy remarks, however, no one could have saved the compromised left wing—Marmont had let it get into a thoroughly vicious position before he was disabled.
Since the main clash of the battle of Salamanca started at the western end of the field, it will be best to begin the narrative of the British advance with the doings of Pakenham and D’Urban. These two officers had some two miles of rough ground to cover between the point where Wellington had parted from them, and the point which had now been reached by the head of the French advance. They were ordered to move in four ‘columns of lines,’ with D’Urban’s cavalry forming the two outer or right-hand columns, the third composed of Wallace’s brigade (1/45th, 1/88th, 74th) and of Power’s Portuguese (9th and 21st Line and 12th Caçadores), while the fourth consisted of Campbell’s brigade (1/5th, 2/5th, 94th, 2/83rd). The object of this formation was that the division, when it came into action, should be able to deploy into two lines, without the delay that would have been caused if the third brigade had followed in the wake of the other two[544].
The way in which the two sides came into collision was rather peculiar. Thomières’s column was accompanied by the whole, or nearly the whole, of Curto’s light cavalry division, which, as one would have supposed, would naturally have been keeping a squadron or so in advance to explore the way, as well as others on the flanks to cover the infantry. But it appears that this simple precaution was not taken, for Pakenham and D’Urban met no French cavalry at all, till they had got well in touch with the hostile infantry. Curto, we must suppose, was marching parallel with the centre, not certainly with the head, of Thomières’s division, without any vedettes or exploring parties in front. For D’Urban describes the first meeting as follows:—
‘The enemy was marching by his left along the wooded heights, which form the southern boundary of the valley of the Arapiles, and the western extremity of which closes in a lower fall, which descends upon the little stream of the Azan, near the village of Miranda. As the head of our column approached this lower fall, or hill, skirting it near its base, and having it on our left, we became aware that we were close to the enemy, though we could not see them owing to the trees, the dust, and the peculiar configuration of the ground. Anxious, therefore, to ascertain their exact whereabouts I had ridden out a little in front, having with me, I think, only my brigade-major Flangini and Da Camara, when upon clearing the verge of a small clump of trees, a short way up the slope, I came suddenly upon the head of a French column of infantry, having about a company in front, and marching very fast by its left. It was at once obvious that, as the columns of the 3rd Division were marching on our left, the French must be already beyond their right, and consequently I ought to attack at once[545].’