Clinton’s English regiments were so disordered and reduced by the awful fire through which they had passed in their victorious march, that he put into front line for a final assault on the enemy his Portuguese brigade, that of the Conde de Rezende, which was still intact, as it had hitherto been in reserve. Its five battalions deployed, and advanced against the now much contracted line of Ferey’s division: they were supported on the left by the Fusilier brigade of the 4th Division, on the right by the 5th Division, which was now re-formed and well to the front. Anson’s cavalry was also in this direction.
The dying effort of Ferey’s division was worthy of its previous hard fighting. ‘Formed right up against the trees,’ writes the French officer, whom we have already quoted, ‘no longer with any artillery to help, we saw the enemy marching up against us in two lines, the first of which was composed of Portuguese. Our position was critical, but we waited for the shock: the two lines moved up toward us; their order was so regular that in the Portuguese regiment in front of us we could see the company intervals, and note the officers behind keeping the men in accurate line, by blows with the flat of their swords or their canes. We fired first, the moment that they got within range: and the volleys which we delivered from our two first ranks were so heavy and so continuous that, though they tried to give us back fire for fire, the whole melted away. The second line was coming up behind—this was English, we should have tried to receive it in the same way, still holding our ground though under a flank fire of artillery, when suddenly the left of our line ceased firing and fell back into the wood in complete disorder. The 70th Ligne had found itself turned by cavalry; it broke; the rout spread down the front to the 26th and 77th; only our two battalions of the 31st Léger held firm, under the fire of the enemy, which continued so long as we showed outside the edge of the forest. We only gave back as the day ended, retiring some 250 yards from our original position, and keeping our voltigeur companies still in a skirmishing line in front[582].’
This vigorous account of the last stand of the French reserve is not far from being accurate. It is quite true that the Portuguese brigade of the 6th Division suffered terribly in its attack, and was completely checked. It lost 487 men during the fifteen minutes in which it was engaged—the heaviest casualty list in any of the brigades of its nation, even heavier than that of Stubbs’s troops in the 4th Division. The only point that requires to be added is that it was not so much a panic caused by a partial cavalry charge which broke the 70th Ligne, and finally dispersed Ferey’s regiments[583], as the pressure of the 5th Division upon the whole of the left of their line, which collapsed almost simultaneously. But they had done their work—before they dispersed, leaving only the 31st Léger to act as a most inadequate rearguard, they had detained the allies for a half-hour or more, and night had set in. Wellington ordered the 6th Division to pursue, but it was so much cut up and fatigued that it only advanced a hundred yards into the forest, and then halted and settled down for the night. Why the intact 7th Division was not rather used for the pursuit it is hard to understand. Still more so is the fact that no cavalry was sent forward in this direction: the woods, no doubt, looked uninviting and dangerous, but the enemy was in a state of absolute panic, and ready to disperse at the least pressure. ‘But,’ says the most intelligent of the British diarists with the mounted arm, ‘the cavalry during the assault on the last hill was ordered back to the point on the left where we assembled before the attack, leaving the infantry to pursue without us. Had this not been done (though it might not have been prudent to pursue with both in the night), yet by their being at hand there was a greater chance of accomplishing more. The order came from Sir Stapleton Cotton himself. The infantry moved in pursuit by moonlight.... I have heard from an officer in the 6th Division that although they had been marching all day, and were so tired, when ordered to halt for the night, that they could not possibly have marched much farther, yet they sat up through the night, talking over the action, each recalling to his comrade the events that happened[584].’
Some part of the slackness of the pursuit is to be explained by an unfortunate misconception by which Wellington (through no fault of his own) was obsessed that night. He was under the impression that the Castle of Alba de Tormes was still held by the Spanish garrison which he had left there, and that the bridge and the neighbouring ford were therefore unavailable for the retreat of the French, who (as he supposed) must be retiring by the fords of Huerta and Villa Gonzalo, which they had used to reach the field. Unhappily—as has been already mentioned—Carlos de España had withdrawn the battalion at Alba without making any mention of the fact to his Commander-in-Chief[585]. Wellington therefore put more thought to urging the pursuit in the direction of the East than of the South, and it was not till late in the night, and when nothing but stragglers had been picked up on the Huerta road, that he discovered what had really occurred.
It remains to relate the unimportant happenings on this front during the evening. At the moment when the French attack on Wellington’s centre failed, about 7 o’clock or soon after, Clausel sent to Foy, whose division still lay behind Calvarisa de Ariba, covering the way to the Huerta fords, the order to retire. His instructions were to cover the flank of the line of retreat of the broken army, and to take up successive detaining positions on its right, on the eastern side of the brook and ravine which lie between the two Arapiles and the village of Utrera. These orders Foy carried out skilfully and well. He fended off the Light Division, which had moved out in pursuit of him, with a heavy rearguard of light troops, always giving way when pressed. His concern was almost entirely with this British unit, for the 1st Division had started too late to get near him. The Light Division and its battery kept him on the run, but never came up with his main body. ‘Night alone saved my division, and the troops that I was covering,’ wrote Foy, ‘without it I should probably have been crushed, and the enemy would have arrived at Alba de Tormes before the wrecks of our seven routed divisions got there. An hour after dark the English cavalry was still pushing charges home against my regiments, which I had placed in alternate chequers of line and column. I had the luck to keep the division in hand till the last, and to steer it in the right direction, though many routed battalions kept pressing in upon my left, and threatened to carry disorder into my ranks. The pursuit ceased near Santa Maria de Utrera[586].’
It is difficult to make out what became of the heavy dragoons of Bock during this long retrograde movement of Foy’s division: they were certainly not the cavalry of which the French general speaks as charging him during his retreat, for they returned no single man or horse killed or wounded that day[587]. Perhaps, far away to the left, they may have been driving in from position to position, the one regiment of Boyer’s dragoons which had been left to cover Foy’s extreme outer flank. More probably they may have been pushing their march towards the fords of Huerta, in the vain hope of finding masses of disbanded enemies on the way, and ultimately cutting them off from the river. This hypothesis is borne out by the fact that the bivouac of the heavy German brigade was that night in front of Pelabravo, much to the north-east of the resting-places of the rest of the army, and in the general direction of the fords[588].
That the pursuit was misdirected was a most lamentable chance for Wellington. If it had been urged in the right direction, the Army of Portugal would have been annihilated as a fighting-body, and would never have been able to make head again in the autumn. For the forest of Alba de Tormes was full of nothing but a disorderly crowd, making the best of its way towards the bridge, with no proper rearguard and no commander in charge of the retreat. Clausel, wounded in the foot, was being looked after by the surgeons in Alba, and was barely able to mount his horse next day. The rout was complete: ‘a shapeless mass of soldiery was rolling down the road like a torrent—infantry, cavalry, artillery, wagons, carts, baggage-mules, the reserve park of the artillery drawn by oxen, were all mixed up. The men, shouting, swearing, running, were out of all order, each one looking after himself alone—a complete stampede. The panic was inexplicable to one who, coming from the extreme rear, knew that there was no pursuit by the enemy to justify the terror shown. I had to stand off far from the road, for if I had got near it, I should have been swept off by the torrent in spite of myself[589].’ So writes the officer, already twice quoted for the narrative of the end of the battle, whose regiment, still hanging together in the most creditable fashion, brought up the rear of the retreat. It is clear that any sort of a pursuit would have produced such a general block at the bridge-head that a disaster like that of Leipzig must have followed, and the whole of the rear of the Army of Portugal, brought up against the river Tormes, must have surrendered en masse.
From eight o’clock at night till three in the morning the routed army was streaming across the bridge and the ford. Once covered by the Tormes some regiments regained a certain order, but many thousands of fugitives, pressing on ahead in unthinking panic, were scattered all over the country-side, and did not come back to their colours for many days, or even weeks.
The actual loss of the Army of Portugal would appear to have been some 14,000 to 15,000 men, not including the ‘missing,’ who afterwards turned up and came back to the ranks. Marmont in his dispatch had the effrontery to write that he lost only 6,000 men[590], and 9 guns: a statement only equalled in mendacity by Soult’s assertion that Albuera had cost him but 2,800 casualties[591]. No general list of losses by regiments was ever given to Napoleon, though he demanded it: but a return proposing to include the casualties not only of Salamanca but of the minor combats of Castrillo and Garcia Hernandez was drawn up, giving a total of 12,435[592]. On the whole, however, it would be safe to allow for 14,000 men as the total loss, exclusive of stragglers. Among officers of rank the Commander-in-Chief was wounded: Ferey and Thomières were killed: the latter died inside the English lines after the battle. Clausel and Bonnet were both wounded, the former slightly, the latter severely, so that four of the eight divisional generals of infantry were hit. Of the brigadiers, Desgraviers (division Thomières) was mortally and Menne (division Foy) severely wounded. The trophies lost were 2 eagles (those of the 22nd and 101st), 6 other colours[593], and 20 guns[594]. Of these last 12 represented the divisional batteries of Thomières and Bonnet, which were taken whole, and the other 8, as it would seem, pieces captured from the long line of batteries on Maucune’s flank, which was rolled up when Le Marchant and Leith swept the plateau in their triumphant advance. Of the eight French divisions those of Thomières and Bonnet would appear to have lost about 2,200 men apiece, Maucune nearly 2,000, Clausel, Brennier, and Ferey above 1,200 each, Sarrut perhaps 500: Foy’s very heavy losses nearly all fell on the next day. The cavalry, with 43 officers hit, must account for at least 500 more of the total[595], and the artillery must have lost, along with their 20 guns, at least 300 or 400 gunners[596]. Of prisoners (wounded and unwounded), there were according to Wellington’s dispatch 137 officers[597] and nearly 7,000 men.
Wellington returned his loss in the British units as 3,129, in the Portuguese as 2,078: of España’s Spaniards 2 were killed and 4 wounded. This makes up the total of 5,173, sent off immediately after the battle. The separate Portuguese return forwarded by Beresford to Lisbon gives the loss of the troops of that nation as somewhat less—1,637 instead of 2,078: the difference of 441 is partly to be accounted for by the reappearance of stragglers who were entered as ‘missing’ in the first casualty-sheet, but cannot entirely explain itself in that fashion. Which of the returns is the more accurate it is hard to be sure, but a prima facie preference would naturally be given to the later and more carefully detailed document. Taking British and Portuguese together, it is clear that the 6th Division, which lost 1,500 men, was far the hardest hit. The 3rd and 5th, which decided the day on the right, got off easily, with a little more than 500 each: the 4th Division, owing to the mishap to the Fusilier brigade and Stubbs’s Portuguese, had very nearly 1,000 casualties. Pack’s five battalions lost 386 men in the one short episode of the battle in which they were engaged, the unsuccessful attack on the Great Arapile, and were lucky to fare no worse. The cavalry total of 173 killed and wounded was also very moderate considering the good work that the brigades of Le Marchant, D’Urban, and Arentschildt performed. In the 1st, 7th, and Light Divisions, the trifling losses were all in the flank-companies sent out in skirmishing line: of the battalions none was engaged as a whole[598]. The artillery were overmatched by the French guns all through the day, and it is surprising to find that they returned only four men killed, and ten wounded. The casualty list of officers of high rank was disproportionately large—not only was Le Marchant killed, but Marshal Beresford, Stapleton Cotton, commanding the cavalry[599], and Leith and Cole, each a divisional general, were disabled. Of officers in the Portuguese service, Collins, commanding a brigade of the 7th Division, was mortally hurt, and the Conde de Rezende, who led the Portuguese of the 6th Division, was wounded.