So much for Wellesley’s first organization of his army. It did not endure for so much as three months, for on June 18, 1809, a General Order, dated from the Adjutant-General’s office at Abrantes, gave to the army the organization in divisions, under which it was to win all its subsequent victories. In the midst of some insignificant directions as to forage and ammunition, appears the clause that “as the weather now admits of the troops hutting, and they can move together in large bodies, brigades can be formed into divisions, as follows.”
The Original Four Divisions
The original disposition was for four divisions only, of which the first consisted of four brigades, the other three of two brigades each. All the battalions in them were in the British service, no Portuguese being included. The four line battalions of the King’s German Legion were arranged first as one, and then as two brigades of the First Division. Of the ten brigades into which the infantry of the army were now divided, seven had two battalions only, the other three three battalions each. The cavalry, which had recently been increased by the arrival of two regiments from England, was organized as a division of three brigades of two regiments each. The artillery, of which only five field batteries (or “companies” as they were then called) had reached the front, was not yet told off to the individual divisions in a permanent fashion, though certain units are generally found acting with the same division.
As to the command of the divisions, Wellington contemplated that each should ultimately be in the charge of a lieutenant-general; but as he had only three officers of such rank at his disposition—Hill, Sherbrooke, and the cavalry commander Payne—the General Order directs that “the senior general officers of brigades will respectively take the command of the division in which their brigades are placed, till other lieutenant-generals shall join the army.” This placed two brigadiers, McKenzie and A. Campbell, in temporary charge of the 3rd and 4th divisions, Sherbrooke taking the 1st, and Hill the 2nd. Sherbrooke went home before a year was out, but Hill was to remain in command of the 2nd division throughout the war, except during the short periods when he was on leave. But during his last three years in the Peninsula, when he was practically acting as commander of an army corps, the 2nd division was, in fact, under the leadership of William Stewart as his substitute. The only modification caused in internal organization by the creation of the new divisions was that an assistant-adjutant-general, and quartermaster-general, and a provost-marshal were attached to each of them, and that the brigadiers acting as division-commanders were authorized to take on some extra aides-de-camp.
Rearrangements after Talavera
It was with this organization that Wellington’s army went through the Talavera campaign, and the retreat to the Guadiana which terminated it. The whole force was British, no single Portuguese battalion accompanying it. The troops of that nation were being employed under Beresford during this summer, to cover the frontier of Beira, between the Douro and the Tagus. Long before the campaign was over, more British reinforcements had begun to arrive at Lisbon, and had been pushed forward some distance into the interior. One brigade, that composed of the three light battalions,[147] under Robert Craufurd, afterwards to be famous in Peninsular annals as the nucleus of the “Light Division,” got to the front after a tremendous march—somewhat exaggerated by Napier and by tradition—only a day after the battle of Talavera. Wellesley incorporated it for a movement in the 3rd division, in which it finished the campaign. There were seven other battalions[148] which did not get so far forward, and ultimately joined Beresford’s Portuguese on the frontier of Spain. In September Wellington drew down these troops to join him in Estremadura, and made from them a third brigade each for his 2nd and 4th Divisions. But there was about this time a shifting about of battalions from division to division, which it would be tedious to give in detail. The net result was that at the end of 1809 Wellington had four much stronger divisions than he had possessed in the summer, the 1st counting nine battalions instead of its old eight, the 2nd ten instead of six, the 3rd still six, but the 4th eight instead of five.
The early months of 1810 were spent by Wellington in an expectant attitude, behind the Portuguese frontier, as he waited for the inevitable French invasion under Masséna, so long announced and so long delayed. In this time of long-deferred anxiety, while the Lines of Torres Vedras were being busily urged towards completion, Wellington carried out some most important changes in the organization of his army, which made it (except in the matter of mere numbers) exactly what it was to remain till the end of the war.
The most notable of these changes was that he made up his mind to revert to his old plan of April, 1809, for mixing the Portuguese and British troops. It took a new form, however: instead of placing battalions of each nationality side by side in his brigades, he attached a Portuguese brigade of four or five battalions to most of his British divisions, as a distinct unit. This system was started with the 3rd and 4th Divisions on Feb. 22, 1810. A complete Portuguese brigade consisted of two line regiments (each of two battalions) and one caçador or rifle battalion. The latter was always employed for the brigade’s skirmishing work; when joined by the four light companies of the line battalions, it gave a very heavy proportion of light troops to the unit. This Wellington considered necessary, because of the untried quality of the whole Portuguese Army, which had not yet taken a serious part in any general action. In the autumn they justified Wellington’s confidence in them at the battle of Bussaco, where all of them, and especially the two caçador battalions attached to the Light Division, played a most creditable part.
The Light Division
The second great innovation made in the spring of 1810 was the creation of the celebrated Light Division, which came into existence on Feb. 22, 1810; it was formed by taking Robert Craufurd’s brigade, the 1/43rd, 1/52nd, and 1/95th out of the 3rd division, and adding to them the above-mentioned two Portuguese caçador battalions. Wellington’s design was to produce for the whole army, by the institution of this new unit, what he had already done for the individual brigades when he added their rifle companies to them in April, 1809. The Light Division was to be, as it were, the protective screen for the whole army,—its strategical skirmishing line, thrown out far in front of the rest of the host, to keep off the French till the actual moment of battle, and to hide the dispositions of the main body. At the head of this small corps of picked light troops was placed Robert Craufurd, whom Wellington rightly considered his best officer for outpost and reconnaissance work. How well this trusted subordinate discharged the duty laid upon him has been told in the chapter dealing with his character and exploits. All through the war Wellington used the Light Division as his screen, for his advanced guard when he was moving to the front, for his rearguard when he was on the retreat, and he was never betrayed by it, even after Craufurd’s death had left its conduct in the hands of chiefs who were not always men of special ability.