On the other hand, when the slopes of the Portuguese mountains were once left behind, Wellington was forced to be most cautious, and to restrict his action to favourable ground (as at Talavera, and Fuentes d’Oñoro) so long as the enemy was hopelessly superior in his number of squadrons. It was only after 1811, when his cavalry regiments were about doubled in numbers, that he could venture down into the plains, and deliver great battles in the open like Salamanca—the first engagement which he ever fought in the Peninsula where his cavalry was not inferior by a third or even a half to that of the French.
Beside the Pyrenean regions and Portugal, there are other districts of the Peninsula where the cavalry arm is handicapped by the terrain—Catalonia for example, where the inland is one mass of rugged valleys, the coastland of the kingdom of Granada, and the great ganglion of mountain lands where Aragon, Valencia, and New Castile meet. But as these were tracts where the British army was little engaged, I pass them over with a mention. But it must also be remembered that each of the great upland plateaux of Spain—Leon, New Castile, La Mancha, and Estremadura, is separated from the others by broad mountain belts, where the Spanish guerillero bands made their headquarters, and rendered communication between plain and plain difficult and perilous.
French Cavalry Tactics
In such a country of contrasts, how did the various combatants use their mounted men during the six long years between Vimeiro and Toulouse? What was the relative value of the different national cavalry, and what were its tactics for battle and for the equally important work of exploration, and of the covering and concealing the movements of the other arms?
French cavalry tactics had, by 1808, when the war began, developed into as definite a system as those of the infantry. Napoleon was fond of massing his horsemen in very large bodies, and launching them at the centre no less than at the flank of the army opposed to him. In the times of Marlborough and of Frederic the Great cavalry was almost always drawn up in long lines on the wings, and used first for the beating of the hostile containing cavalry, and then for turning against the unprotected flank of the enemy’s infantry in the centre. A cavalry dash at a weak point in the middle of the hostile front was very rare indeed, and only tried by the very few generals of first rate intelligence, who had emancipated themselves from the old routine which prescribed the regular drawing up of an army. Marlborough’s cavalry charge at the French right-centre at Blenheim is almost the only first-rate example of such a stroke in the old wars of the eighteenth century. Frederic’s great cavalry charge at Rossbach, which is sometimes quoted as a parallel, was after all no more than a sudden rush of the Prussian flank-cavalry at the exposed wing of an army which was unwisely trying to march around the position of its adversary. But Napoleon was the exponent of great frontal attacks of cavalry on chosen weak spots of the enemy’s line, which had already been well pounded by artillery or weakened in some other way. He would use 6000, 8000, or (as at Waterloo) even 12,000 men for one of these great strokes. At Austerlitz and Borodino these charges were made straight at the enemy’s front: Marengo and Dresden were won by such rushes: Eylau was only saved from falling into a disaster by a blow of the same kind. But cavalry had to be used at precisely the right moment, to be most skilfully led, and to be pushed home without remorse and despite of all losses, if it was to be successful. Even then it might be beaten off by thoroughly cool and unshaken infantry, as at Waterloo. It was only against exhausted, distracted, or untrained battalions that it could count with a reasonable certainty of success.
All through the war the raw and badly-drilled Spanish armies supplied the French squadrons with exactly this sort of opportunities. They were always being surprised before they had been formed by their generals in line of battle, or caught in confusion while they were executing some complicated manœuvre. If attacked while they were in line or in column of march, they always fell victims to a cavalry charge, being from want of discipline extraordinarily slow to form square. As if this was not enough, they were often weak enough in morale to allow themselves to be broken even when they had time to form their squares. The battles of Medellin, Ocaña, the Gebora, and Saguntum, were good examples of the power of a comparatively small mass of cavalry skilfully handled, over a numerous but ill-disciplined infantry. But the little-mentioned combat of Margalef in 1810 is perhaps the strongest example of the kind, for there six squadrons of Suchet’s cavalry (the 13th Cuirassiers supported by two squadrons of the 3rd Hussars) actually rode down in succession, a whole division of some 4000 men, whom they caught while forming line of battle from column of march. This was done, too, despite of the fact that the Spanish infantry was accompanied by three squadrons of cavalry (who made the usual bolt at the commencement of the action), as well as by a half-battery of artillery.
Successes of the French Cavalry
It was of course a very different matter when the French cavalry had to face the steady battalions of the British army. Looking down all the record of battles and skirmishes from 1808 down to 1814, I can only remember two occasions when the enemy’s cavalry really achieved a notable tactical success. Oddly enough both fell within the month of May, 1811. At Albuera there occurred that complete disaster to a British infantry brigade which has already been described in the preceding chapter. The other, and much smaller, success achieved by French cavalry over British infantry at Fuentes de Oñoro, a few days before the greater disaster at Albuera, has also been alluded to.[97] These two disasters were wholly exceptional; usually the British infantry held its own, unless it was absolutely taken by surprise, and this even when attacked frontally by cavalry while it was deployed in the two deep line, without forming square. If the British had their flanks covered, they were perfectly safe, and turned back any charge with ease.
Indeed the repulse of cavalry by British troops in line, who did not take the trouble to form square because their flanks were covered, was not infrequent in the Peninsular War. The classic instance is that of the 5th Northumberland Fusiliers at El Bodon in 1811, who advanced in line firing against two French cavalry regiments and drove them off the heights, being able to do so because they had a squadron or two of British horse to protect them from being turned. A very similar feat was performed by the 52nd at Sabugal in 1811: and Harvey’s Portuguese brigade did as much at Albuera.
Much more, of course, was the square impregnable. When once safely placed in that formation, British troops habitually not only withstood cavalry charges at a stand-still, but made long movements over a battlefield inundated by the hostile cavalry. At Fuentes de Oñoro the Light Division, three British and two Portuguese squares, retreated at leisure for two miles while beset by four brigades of French cavalry, and reached the ground which they had been ordered to take up with a total loss of one killed and thirty-four wounded. Similarly at El Bodon the square composed of the 5th and 77th retreated for six miles, in the face of two cavalry brigades which could never break into them.[98]