Le Marchant’s brigade had now lost its formation, ‘the three regiments had become mixed together, the officers rode where they could find places: but a good front, without intervals, was still maintained, and there was no confusion[557].’ In front of them there was now a fresh enemy—the 22nd Line, the leading regiment of the division of Brennier, which had just arrived on the field, and was getting into order to save and support Maucune’s routed battalions. It would seem that in the midst of the dust and smoke, and surrounded and interfered with by the fugitives of the broken regiments, the 22nd had either no time or no good opportunity for forming squares: they were found in colonne serrée, in good order, partly covered by a clump of trees, an outlying thicket from the great forest to their rear. They reserved their fire, with great composure, till the dragoons were within ten yards distance, and poured a volley so close and well aimed upon the leading squadron [5th Dragoon Guards] that nearly a fourth of them fell. Tremendous as was the effect of the discharge, the dragoons were not arrested: they broke in through the opposing bayonets, and plunged into the dense masses of the enemy. In the combat which ensued, broadsword and bayonet were used against each other with various results: the French, hewn down and trampled under the horses’ feet, offered all the resistance that brave men could make. Le Marchant himself had some narrow escapes—he fought like a private, and had to cut down more than one of the enemy. It was only after a fierce struggle that the French yielded, and he had the satisfaction of seeing them fly before him in helpless confusion. The brigade had now lost all order: the dragoons, excited by the struggle, vied with each other in the pursuit, and galloped recklessly into the crowd of fugitives, sabring those who came within their reach. To restrain them at such a moment was beyond the power of their officers[558].’
Le Marchant endeavoured to keep a few men in hand, in order to guard against any attempt of the French to rally, but he had only about half a squadron of the 4th Dragoons with him, when he came upon some companies which were beginning to re-form in the edge of the great wood. He led his party against them, and drove them back among the trees, where they dispersed. But at the moment of contact he was shot dead, by a ball which entered his groin and broke his spine. Thus fell an officer of whom great things had been expected by all who knew him, in the moment when he had just obtained and used to the full his first chance of leading his brigade in a general action. One of the few scientific soldiers in the cavalry arm whom the British army owned, Le Marchant had been mainly known as the founder and administrator of the Royal Military College at High Wycombe, which was already beginning to send to the front many young officers trained as their predecessors had never been. He was the author of many military pamphlets, and of a new system of sword exercise which had lately been adopted for the cavalry[559]. On his promotion to the rank of Major-General, in 1811, he had been unexpectedly sent to the Peninsula in command of the heavy brigade, which reinforced Wellington during that autumn. As an executive commander in the field he had given the first proofs of his ability at the combat of Villagarcia[560]—but this was a small affair—at Salamanca he proved himself a born commander of cavalry, and his services would have been invaluable to Wellington in later fields but for the disastrous shot that ended his career. He was a man of a lofty and religious spirit, ill to be spared by his country[561].
Le Marchant’s charge made a complete wreck of the left wing of the French army. The remnants of the eight battalions which he had broken fled eastward in a confused mass, towards the edge of the woods, becoming blended with the separate stream of fugitives from Thomières’s division. The 5th Division swept in some 1,500 prisoners from them, as also the eagle of the 22nd Line, which the heavy brigade had broken in their last effort, while five guns were taken by the 4th Dragoons[562]. The French, flying blindly from the pursuit, were so scattered that some of them actually ran in headlong among D’Urban’s Portuguese horse, on the back side of the plateau. ‘We were so far in their rear,’ writes that officer, ‘that a mass of their routed infantry (to our astonishment, since we did not know the cause) in the wildness of their panic and confusion, and throwing away their arms, actually ran against our horses, where many of them fell down exhausted, and incapable of further movement.’ The same happened in the front of the 3rd Division, where, according to a narrator in the Connaught Rangers, ‘hundreds of men frightfully disfigured, black with dust, worn out with fatigue, and covered with sabre-cuts and blood, threw themselves among us for safety.’
The 3rd Division had now, in its advance along the plateau, come in contact with the right flank of the fifth, and both of them fell into one line reaching across the whole breadth of the heights, while in front of them were recoiling the wrecks of Thomières, Maucune, and Brennier. The four French regiments which had not been caught in Le Marchant’s charge were still keeping together, and making occasional attempts at a stand, but were always outflanked on their left by the 3rd Division and Arentschildt’s and D’Urban’s horse. Curto’s French light cavalry had rallied, and picked up their second brigade, and were now doing their best to cover the southern flank of the retreating multitude[563]. An officer of one of their regiments speaks in his memoirs of having charged with advantage against red dragoons—these must apparently have been scattered parties of Le Marchant’s brigade, pursuing far and furiously, since no other red-coated cavalry was in this part of the field[564]. But Curto’s squadrons had mainly to do with Arentschildt and D’Urban, both of whom report sharp fighting with French horse at this moment. The 3rd French Hussars charged the 1st Hussars K.G.L., while the latter were employed in gleaning prisoners from the routed infantry, and were only driven off after a severe combat[565]. The pursuit then continued until the disordered French masses were driven off the plateau, and on to the wooded hills parallel with the Greater Arapile, where Marmont had massed his army before his fatal move to the left.
Meanwhile the 4th Division and Pack’s Portuguese had fought, with much less fortunate results, against the French divisions of Clausel and Bonnet. There are good narratives of their advance from three officers who took part in it, all so full and clear that it is impossible to have any doubts about its details. One comes from the Assistant Quarter-Master-General of the 4th Division, Charles Vere: the second is from the captain commanding one of the four light companies of the Fusilier brigade, Ludwig von Wachholz of the Brunswick-Oels Jägers: the third is the narrative of Pack’s aide-de-camp, Charles Synge, who was with the front line of the Portuguese in their vigorous but unsuccessful attack on the Greater Arapile. The three narratives have nothing contradictory in them.
The sequence of events was as follows. After deploying the three battalions of the Fusilier brigade (1/7th, 1/23rd, 1/48th) beyond the end of the village of Arapiles, and Stubbs’s Portuguese brigade to their left, Cole started to cross the valley, having a very strong skirmishing line, composed of the whole of the 7th Caçadores and of the four light companies of the British brigade. During the first stage of the advance, which started at 5.45[566], a perceptible time after that of the 5th Division, the two brigades suffered severely from French artillery fire, but had no infantry opposed to them. Their objective was the division of Clausel, which had by this time come into line on the extreme eastern end of the plateau occupied by Maucune. When the advancing line had reached the trough of the valley which separated it from the French heights, Cole saw that his left front was faced by a detached French force[567] on a low rocky ridge half-way between the end of the plateau and the Great Arapile, and also that behind the Arapile, and in a position to support this detachment, were several other French battalions. Pack was deploying to assault the Arapile, but even if he won a first success there was visible a considerable mass of troops behind it. After the valley was crossed Stubbs’s Portuguese brigade, coming first into action, with the caçadores in front, attacked the French regiment on the knoll and drove it back. It retired towards the Arapile and the bulk of Bonnet’s division, to which it belonged. Cole detached his caçador battalion to follow it, hoping that Pack might succeed in ‘containing’ the rest of the French force in this direction. The remainder of his line pushed on, with the light companies of the Fusilier brigade acting as its screen, and attacked Clausel on the plateau. The advance was steady, but cost many lives, and the line was enfiladed by a tiresome flank fire from the French guns on the top of the Great Arapile. Nevertheless the crest was reached—on it lay the front line of the French division—five battalions—which engaged in a furious frontal combat of musketry with the Fusiliers and their Portuguese comrades, but was beaten in it, and fell back some 200 yards on to its reserves. The impetus of the attack was exhausted, Cole had just been wounded, so that there was a gap in the command, and the troops were re-forming and recovering their breath, when it was seen that things were going very badly behind and to the left. The attack on the Arapile had by this time been delivered, and had failed completely.
Pack had grasped the fact that when the 4th Division had crossed the valley, it would be much at the mercy of Bonnet’s troops in the direction of the Arapile, which were now on its flank, and would presently be almost in its rear. He therefore resolved to use the option of attacking that Wellington had given him. He deployed the 4th Caçadores as a skirmishing line, gave them as an immediate support the four grenadier companies of his line regiments, and followed with the rest in two columns, the 1st Line on the right, the 16th on the left. The caçadores went up the comparatively level field which formed the central slope between the two rocky ends of the Arapile—it was sown with rye some three feet high that year. French skirmishers in small numbers gave way before them, but the main opposition of the enemy was from his battery placed on the summit. The skirmishing line got four-fifths of the way to the crest, and then found an obstacle before it, a bank of some four feet high, where the field ended. It was perpendicular, and men scrambling up it had to sling their muskets, or to lay them down, so as to be able to use both hands. The caçadores were just tackling the bank—a few of them were over it—when the French regiment on top, the 120th, which had been waiting till the Portuguese should reach the obstacle, delivered a shattering volley and charged. The caçadores were quite helpless, being more engaged in climbing than in using their arms[568]. They were swept off in a moment, and the French, jumping down into the field, pursued them vigorously, and overthrew first the supporting grenadier companies, and then the two regiments, which were caught half-way up the slope. As Napier truly observes, ‘the Portuguese were scoffed at for their failure—but unjustly: no troops could have withstood that crash upon such steep ground, and the propriety of attacking the hill at all seems questionable.’ Pack made the attempt purely because he thought that it was the only way of taking off the attention of the French from Cole’s flank. The brigade suffered heavily, losing 386 men in ten minutes. It took refuge at the foot of the British Arapile, where it was covered by the 1/40th of Anson’s brigade, which was standing there in reserve.
The French brigadier in command on the Greater Arapile wisely made little attempt to pursue Pack’s fugitives, but having his front now clear of any danger, sallied out from behind his hill with three regiments, the 118th and 119th and the re-formed 122nd, against the flank and rear of the British 4th Division. There was nothing in front of him save the 7th Caçadores, which Cole had detached as a covering force, when he stormed the heights with the remainder of the brigades of Ellis and Stubbs. This isolated battalion behaved very well, it stood its ground in line, but was absolutely overwhelmed and broken up by the superior numbers converging on it[569].
Nearly at the same moment Clausel’s whole force in column charged the two brigades of the 4th Division which had carried the heights. The French were in superior numbers—ten battalions to seven—and their two reserve regiments were fresh troops, acting against men who had just won a dearly-bought success by a great effort. The Anglo-Portuguese line gave way, from the left first, where the 23rd Portuguese began the movement. But it spread down the whole front, and the Fusiliers, no less than Stubbs’s brigade, recoiled to the very foot of the plateau[570].
This reverse gave Clausel, who was now in command since Bonnet’s wound, an opportunity that looked unlikely a few minutes before. He could either withdraw the Army of Portugal in retreat, covering the three disorganized divisions with those which were still intact—his own, Bonnet’s, and the two reserve divisions of Ferey and Sarrut, which had just come on the ground—Foy was far off and otherwise engaged—or he might adopt a bolder policy, and attempt to take advantage of the disaster to Pack and Cole, by bursting into the gap between Leith and the British Arapile, and trying to break Wellington’s centre. Being an ambitious and resolute man he chose the latter alternative—though it was a dangerous one when Leith and Pakenham were bearing in hard upon his routed left wing. Accordingly he left Sarrut to rally and cover the three beaten divisions, and attacked with his right centre. His own division followed the retreating brigades of Ellis and Stubbs down the heights, while the three disposable regiments of Bonnet came into line to its right, and Boyer’s three regiments of dragoons advanced down the depression between the Greater Arapile and the recovered plateau. Ferey was left in second line or reserve on the crest.