At last, after five years spent in rather acrid parliamentary criticism, Craufurd was given an opportunity by his friend Windham to see service in a higher post than had ever before fallen to his lot. Though only just promoted to a full colonelcy, he was given the command of a brigade of 4000 men, destined for a distant expedition. This adventure was one of the most hare-brained of the many futile schemes of the unlucky cabinet then in power. Craufurd was to take in hand nothing less than a voyage round Cape Horn, for the conquest of Chili! He never saw the straits of Magellan, however, for his force, after it had sailed, was distracted to form part of the unhappy armament under General Whitelocke, which made the disastrous attack on Buenos Ayres in 1807. Placed in the front, in command of Whitelocke’s Light Brigade, and thrust forward into the tangle of streets among which the incapable general dispersed his troops in many small columns, Craufurd fought his way so far on that he was surrounded, cut off from the main body, and compelled to capitulate with the remnants of his men. Thus his first chance of distinction in the field, at the head of a considerable force, ended in absolute disaster. He was acquitted of all blame at Whitelocke’s court-martial, but the thought that he was remembered as the officer who had surrendered a British brigade rankled in his mind, and sat heavy on his soul down to the end of his life.
The fact that he was held blameless, however, was marked by his appointment to the command of a brigade in the Peninsular Army in 1808. But his usual ill-luck seemed at first to attend him. He arrived too late for Vimeiro; when serving under Moore he was detached from the main army, and did not fight at Corunna. In the next year, returning to serve under Wellesley, he was late for Talavera, though to reach the battlefield he made his well-remembered march of forty-three miles in twenty-six hours, which Napier, by a slip of memory, has converted into an impossible achievement—a march of sixty-two miles in that time, which not even Craufurd and the famous 43rd, 52nd, and 95th could have accomplished.
Craufurd and the Light Division
From 1809 onward Craufurd at last got his chance, and for the greater part of three years[122] was in command of Wellington’s advance, his “Light Brigade” of 1809 becoming the “Light Division” in 1810. At length he got what Fate had denied him in all his earlier career, a post of great distinction and responsibility, and a sight of victory; for fifteen years he had been witnessing nothing but retreats and disasters. On his happy days, and they were many, Craufurd was undoubtedly the most brilliant lieutenant that Wellington ever owned. Yet he was not trusted by his chief as Hill, for example, was trusted, because of his occasional lapses from caution, and from the blind obedience which his chief exacted. Occasionally he took risks, or ventured to modify the orders given him—the faults of an eager and ambitious spirit in an hour of excitement.
His achievements were great and noble. The most splendid of them was the protection of the north-east frontier of Portugal throughout the whole spring and summer of 1810, when he was set with his own small division and two regiments of cavalry to lie out many miles in front of the main army, and to watch the assembling host of Masséna, till the moment when it should make its forward move for serious invasion. For five months he guarded a long front against an enemy of sixfold force, without allowing his line to be pierced, or suffering the French to gain any information as to what was going on in his rear. This was a great feat, only accomplished by the most complete and minute organization of his very modest resources. There were fifteen fords along the Agueda, the river whose line he had to keep, all of which had to be watched in dry weather, and many even when the stream was high. The French had 3000 cavalry opposite him in March and April, 5000 in May and June, the latter a force exceeding in numbers the total of his whole division. Behind the hostile cavalry screen he knew that there were two full army corps, or over 40,000 men; and many detachments of this infantry lay only four or five miles from Craufurd’s outposts, and might attack him at any moment. Yet he never suffered any surprise; so well were his observation-posts placed and managed, that the least movement of the enemy was reported to him in an incredibly short time. The whole web of communications quivered at the slightest touch, and the Light Division was concentrated ready to fight or to retreat, as prudence dictated, long before the attack could develop. So wonderfully had he trained his troops that any battalion, as Napier records, was ready under arms within seven minutes from the first alarm signal, and within a quarter of an hour could be in order of battle on its appointed post, with its baggage loaded and assembled ready for departure at a convenient distance to the rear.
As his aide-de-camp, Shaw Kennedy, the historian of this summer, writes, “To understand Craufurd’s operations the calculation must never be lost sight of, for it was on calculation that he acted all along.” Special reports were made of the numerous fords of the Agueda every morning, and the rapidity of its rises was periodically marked. Beacons were placed on conspicuous heights, so as to communicate information as to the enemy’s offensive movements. To ensure against mistakes in the night, pointers were kept at the stations of communication, directed to the beacons. The cavalry regiment at the outposts was the first Hussars of the King’s German Legion, a veteran corps, chosen because its officers were considered superior in scouting power to that of any other light cavalry unit with the army. Craufurd, knowing German well, communicated with each of its squadron leaders directly; each knew his own duty for the front that he covered, and each worked out his part admirably. The general was untiring, could remain on horseback unwearied for almost any length of time, and knew personally every ford, defile, and by-path. Hence nothing was left to chance.[123]
Craufurd and Wellington
It was a pity that Craufurd ended this splendid piece of service, which lasted over five months of daily danger, by fighting the unnecessary “Combat of the Coa” on July 4, 1810. Staying a day too long beyond that stream despite of Wellington’s clear direction to retire the moment that he was hard pressed, he was suddenly attacked by the whole of Ney’s corps, 20,000 men or more, and forced over the Coa, with loss which might have been great but for the excellence of the battalions he had trained and the cool-headed tactical skill of his regimental officers. He held the bridge of the Coa successfully when he had crossed it, and lost no more than 300 men; but he had disobeyed orders and risked his division. Wellington was justly displeased, and let his lieutenant know it. But he did not rebuke him in his dispatches, and continued him in his command. He wrote home in a confidential letter, “You will say, ‘Why not accuse Craufurd?’ I answer, ‘Because if I am to be hanged for it, I cannot accuse a man who meant well, and whose error was one of judgment, not of intention.’” But for the future he kept Craufurd nearer to himself, and did not place him so far away that he had much chance of trying strategical experiments on his own responsibility. Even so, there were other occasions on which the general’s proneness to think for himself got him into trouble. One was on September 25, 1811, on the day of the combat of El Bodon, when Craufurd, thrown forward into a hazardous position by his chief’s orders, was twelve hours late in joining the main army. He had been told to make a night march, but waited till dawn, because he was moving in a difficult and broken country full of ravines and torrents, where he judged that movement in the dark was dangerous. By his delay the army was concentrated half a day later than Wellington intended. “I am glad to see you safe,” observed the Commander-in-Chief with some asperity, as the Light Division filed into the scantily manned position at Fuente Guinaldo. “Oh, I was in no danger, I assure you.” “But I was, from your conduct,” answered Wellington. Whereupon Craufurd remarked to his staff, “He’s d——d crusty to-day.”[124] In this case it must be remarked, in justice to Craufurd, that it was his chief who had placed him in the hazardous position, not himself, and that his judgment that the night march was impracticable was very probably correct. But he had disobeyed an order, and it was remembered against him by the inflexible Wellington.
Against these lapses must be set a long career of careful and scientific soldiering, with movements of brilliant manœuvring, and sudden strokes, in which no other Peninsular general could vie with him. The repulse of Ney’s corps at Bussaco was perhaps the most glorious exploit of Craufurd and his Light Division. The way in which the French on this occasion were detained and harassed by light troops, and then, just as they reached the crest of the position, charged and swept downhill by the rush of a much inferior force, launched at the right moment, was a beautiful example of tactics. The most astonishing part of it was that, by his careful choice of a position, and judicious concealment of his line till the critical minute, Craufurd beat his enemy with hardly any loss; he had only 177 casualties, the French opposed to him over 1200. Yet there was another feat which, though less showy, was probably an even greater example of tactical skill than the stroke at Bussaco. This was the advance and retreat of the Light Division at Fuentes de Oñoro (May 5, 1811), when Craufurd was sent out of the main British position to rescue the 7th Division, which was cut off and nearly surrounded by an overwhelming force of French cavalry. Having disengaged the compromised division, Craufurd had to retreat back to the main body with five brigades of fine cavalry, aided by horse artillery, surging round him on all sides, and seeking for an opportunity to burst in. To retreat in square across two miles of open plateau, very well adapted for the action of horsemen, was a delicate and dangerous task. Yet Craufurd achieved it with perfect security, and brought in his whole division to Wellington’s position with a loss of less than fifty men. As an exhibition of nerve and skill it even exceeded Picton’s retreat at El Bodon, for the French horse on this occasion were more numerous, and flushed with previous success, and the Light Division was a smaller body than the 3rd division by 4000 men to 5200. The distance covered, however, during the crisis of retreat at Fuentes was much shorter, only two miles to seven at El Bodon.
Craufurd fell in action before 1812 was many days old, being killed by a chance shot while watching and directing the storm of the lesser breach at Ciudad Rodrigo from the further side of the glacis (January 19). Otherwise his peculiar talents would no doubt have been exhibited in commanding the rear-guard during the retreat from Burgos, and the advance during the campaign of Vittoria. The character of the fighting in the Pyrenees would also have suited admirably his particular style of management. He was bitterly missed by his officers, Charles Alten, his successor in command of the Light Division being a general of much more pedestrian quality,[125] who might never fail to make an attempt to obey Wellington’s orders to the best of his ability, but could never supplement them by any improvisation of his own, of which he was incapable. The operations of the Light Division after Craufurd’s death were always admirable so far as the conduct of officers and men went, but there was no longer any genius in the way in which they were led.