Indeed it may be stated, as a rule almost without exception, that troops in square, whether British or French, were never broken during the Peninsular War even by very desperate and gallant charges. One of the best instances of this general rule was the case of the combat of Barquilla, where two grenadier companies of the French 22nd, surprised while covering a foraging party by five squadrons of British cavalry, got away in a level country after having been charged successively by three squadrons of the 1st Hussars of the German Legion, the 16th and the 14th Light Dragoons. One of these three squadron-charges, at least (that of the 14th), had been pushed home so handsomely that an officer and nine men fell actually among the French front rank, and a French observer noted bayonets broken, and musket barrels deeply cut into by the sweeping blows of the light dragoons, who yet failed entirely to break in.
Cavalry Action against Squares
There was indeed only one extraordinary case of properly formed squares being broken during the whole war, a case as exceptional in one way as the disaster to Colborne’s brigade at Albuera was in the other. This was at the combat of Garcia Hernandez, on the morning after the battle of Salamanca, where the heavy dragoons of the K.G.L. delivered what Foy (the French historian of the war) called the best charge that he had ever seen. The rear-guard of Marmont’s army had been formed of the one division which had not been seriously engaged in the battle, so that it could not be said to have been composed of shaken or demoralized troops. Nevertheless, two of its squares were actually broken by the legionary dragoons, though drawn up without haste or hurry on a hillside favourable for defensive action. According to Beamish’s History of the German Legion, a work composed a few years later from the testimony of eye-witnesses, the first square was broken by a mortally wounded horse, carrying a dead rider, leaping right upon the kneeling front rank of the square, and bearing down half a dozen men by its struggles and kicking. An officer, Captain Gleichen, spurred his horse into the gap thus created, his men followed, a wedge was thrust into the square, and it broke up, the large majority of the men surrendering. The second square, belonging to the same regiment, the 6th Léger, was a little higher up the hillside than the first: it was a witness of the destruction of the sister-battalion, and seems to have been shaken by the sight: at any rate, when assailed a few minutes later by another squadron of the German Dragoons, it gave a rather wild though destructive volley, and wavered at the moment of receiving the attack, bulging in at the first charge. This was, of course, fatal. The broken squares lost 1400 prisoners, beside some 200 killed and wounded. The victorious dragoons paid a fairly high price for their success, losing 4 officers and 50 men killed, and 2 officers, and 60 men wounded out of 700 present; the extraordinary proportion of killed to wounded, 54 to 62 marking the deadly effect of musketry at the closest possible quarters.
This (as I said before) was the exception that proved the rule: the invulnerability of a steady square was such a commonplace, that Foy and the other old officers of the Army of Spain, looked with dismay upon Napoleon’s great attempt at Waterloo to break down the long line of British squares between La Haye Sainte and Hougoumont, by the charges of some ten or twelve thousand cavalry massed on a short front of less than a mile. The Emperor had not allowed for the superior resisting power of a thoroughly good infantry.
Of fights between cavalry and cavalry, when the two sides were present in numbers so fairly equal as to make the struggle a fair test of their relative efficiency, there were comparatively few in the Peninsular War. In the early days of the war Wellington was too scantily provided with horsemen, and could never afford to engage in a cavalry battle on a large scale. He had only six regiments at Talavera in 1809, only seven in the Bussaco campaign of 1810. When he divided his army for the simultaneous campaign in Beira and in Estremadura in March, 1811, he could only give Beresford three regiments, and keep four for himself. Nor could the deficiency be supplied (as was done in the artillery arm) by using Portuguese auxiliaries. The cavalry of that nation was so weak and so badly mounted that it is doubtful whether there were ever so many as 2000 of them in the field at once. Many of the twelve regiments were never mounted, and did garrison duty as infantry throughout the war.
Wellington and his Cavalry
It was not till the summer and autumn of 1811 that Wellington at last began to get large reinforcements of the mounted arm from England, which more than doubled his strength, for in the campaign of 1812 he had no less than fifteen regiments instead of seven. In the winter of 1812–13 further reinforcements came out, and in the Vittoria campaign he had at last a powerful cavalry equal or superior to that of the French.[99]
Yet even allowing for the weakness of Wellington’s mounted strength in his earlier campaigns, we must acknowledge that they played a comparatively small part in his scheme of operations. Though his dragoons did good service in keeping his front covered, and performed many gallant exploits (we need only mention Talavera and Fuentes de Oñoro to instance good self-sacrificing work done), they were seldom used as part of the main striking force that won a victory. Indeed, the charge of Le Marchant’s heavy brigade at Salamanca is about the only instance that can be cited of really decisive action by cavalry in any of the Duke’s battles. There were other notable successes to be remembered, but they were in side issues, and often not under the chief’s own eye—as, for example, Bock’s breaking of the squares at Garcia Hernandez on the day after Salamanca, and Lumley’s very creditable victory over Latour-Maubourg at Usagre on May 25, 1811.
Even when Wellington had at last a large cavalry force in 1812–14, it was seldom found massed, and I believe that more than three brigades were never found acting together. Such a force as six regiments was seldom seen in line and engaged. For the use of cavalry as a screen we may mention the combat of Venta del Pozo, during the retreat from Burgos in 1812. This was a skirmish fought by two brigades to cover the withdrawal of the infantry, which had to hurry hard on the way toward Salamanca and safety.
Something, no doubt, must be allowed for the fact that Wellington never, till the Waterloo campaign, had an officer of proved ability in chief command of his cavalry. Stapleton Cotton, who served so long in that capacity, was not a man of mark. Lumley, who had a short but distinguished career as a divisional commander, went home sick in 1811, and Le Marchant, who came out from home with a high reputation, was most unfortunately killed in his first battle, Salamanca, where his brigade did so much to settle the fortunes of the day. But allowing for all this, it remains clear that Wellington made comparatively little use of the cavalry arm—which could hardly have been expected when we remember how effectively he had used his horse at Assaye, quite early in his career. Possibly the fact that he was so hopelessly outmatched in this arm in 1809–11 sunk so much into his soul, that when he got his chance, later on, he was not ready to use it. Certainly several cases can be cited where it was not duly used to press a completed victory—most particularly after Vittoria and Orthez. There is no concealing the fact that Wellington’s reluctance to use great cavalry attacks was, at bottom, due to his doubts as to the tactical skill of his senior officers, and the power of his regiments to manœuvre. He divulged his views on the subject, twelve years after the war was over, in a letter to Lord John Russell, dated July 31, 1826. “I considered our cavalry,” he wrote, “so inferior to the French from want of order, that although I considered one of our squadrons a match for two French, yet I did not care to see four British opposed to four French, and still more so as the numbers increased, and order (of course) became more necessary. They could gallop, but could not preserve their order.”