After the creation of the Light Division, Wellington had five instead of four divisions, and another was added to them in the summer of 1810, when in August he created the 5th Division, so long commanded by General Leith. This was formed by adding to a British brigade, newly arrived from England,[149] two of the hitherto unattached Portuguese brigades. A second British brigade was provided in October for Leith, from troops newly come from Cadiz.[150] These having come to hand, the 5th Division dropped one of its Portuguese brigades, and became a unit of the normal shape and size, two-thirds British, one-third Portuguese. It did not, however, receive its caçador battalion (drawn from the Lusitanian Legion) till 1811.
During the campaign of Bussaco, therefore, Wellington had six divisions—the old ones numbered 1st to 4th, the Light Division, and the newly-created 5th. In addition to the Portuguese brigades which had now been absorbed into the divisions, there remained six more brigades of that nation which were still unattached. Of these two, under the Brigadiers Archibald Campbell and Fonseca, were formed into a division under General Hamilton, which always marched with Hill’s 2nd Division, but was never formally made part of it. But since Hamilton invariably moved along with Hill, this pair of units, with their ten British and eight Portuguese battalions, practically formed a double division, or a small army corps, if a term which Wellington never used in the Peninsula may be applied to it.[151] There remained four more independent Portuguese brigades, those of Pack, Alex. Campbell, Coleman, and Bradford. By the next year these were reduced to two, as one brigade was withdrawn to serve with the new British 7th division, and another with the 2nd. The surviving units continued as unattached brigades till the end of the war, under a series of commanding officers, whose succession is sometimes hard to follow.[152] They often accompanied the main army, but were sometimes separated from it for special duties, when some force less than a division was wanted, as a detachment for a subsidiary operation.
Creation of the 6th and 7th Divisions
The completion of the Peninsular Army in its final shape, which was not again to be varied, took place during its stay by the Lines of Torres Vedras, in the winter of 1810–11. It was then that the two junior divisions were created, the 6th in October, the 7th early in March. Their appearance in the field was, of course, due to the arrival of a considerable number of fresh battalions from England during the autumn and winter. But Wellington did not take all the new-comers and build up fresh divisions from them. The 6th Division was made by taking an old brigade (Archibald Campbell’s) from the 4th Division, and uniting it to the extra Portuguese brigade of the 5th Division.[153] The second British brigade of the 6th division was provided some months later from newly-arrived troops from England.[154] The 4th Division was compensated for the brigade it had given to the 6th by taking over a brigade (Pakenham’s) from the 1st Division—while the 1st Division, to replace this last unit, received three battalions[155] which had just come out from home.
This was a complicated shift and transfer, intended to secure a level quality in the divisions by the mixture of recently arrived and veteran battalions. But in organizing his last creation, the 7th Division, Wellington was prevented by circumstances from carrying out the same wise plan. Much belated in their arrival at Lisbon by contrary winds, the last batch of reinforcements sent to him for the campaign of 1811, landed when the main army was already in pursuit of Masséna, who had just started on his retreat from Santarem. Wellington was forced to keep them together, since he had no time to distribute them when the troops were all on the move. The 7th division was at first very weak, containing only one brigade in British pay, consisting of two English and two foreign corps,[156] and one Portuguese brigade (Coleman). Two more foreign corps belonging to the German Legion[157] formed the second brigade of the 7th Division, but did not join it till the summer, being distracted meanwhile to another field of operations.
The 7th Division was for some time looked on as the “ugly duckling,” or backward child of the army. Having only two British to four foreign battalions, it was sometimes called “the Mongrels;” its first début in action at Fuentes de Oñoro was not a very happy one, as it was the outlying flank force that was turned and partly cut up by French cavalry. After this it was never seriously engaged in battle for more than a year. Moreover, its foreigners earned a bad reputation for their habit of desertion—a habit not altogether unnatural, for they had been largely recruited from the pontoons and prison-camps in England.[158] Hence a cruel joke in the list of divisional nicknames given by several Peninsular diarists. The sobriquets run: Light Division, The Division; no doubt the title given to it by its own proud members. First Division: “The Gentlemen’s Sons,” because it contained one, and afterwards two, brigades of the Foot Guards. The Second Division is called “the Observing Division,” because it was so often detached as a containing force against Soult, on the side of Estremadura and Andalusia, while the main body was more actively engaged on the side of Leon. So much was this its duty that it was only present at one general action, Albuera, between the autumn of 1810 and the summer of 1813. There were some brilliant episodes between those dates, such as the surprise of Arroyo dos Molinos, and the storming of the forts at Almaraz. The 3rd Division was called “the Fighting Division,” its fiery leader, Picton, having led it into the forefront of the battle both at Bussaco and Fuentes de Oñoro, not to speak of smaller fights like Redinha or El Bodon; it had also done the hardest of work at the storms of Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajoz. The 4th Division was called the “Supporting Division;” I suppose because it was sent off to support the 2nd in Estremadura, and most effectually discharged that duty at Albuera.[159] The 5th division was called “the Pioneers,” a name whose source I cannot explain: possibly it refers to some road-making work done in 1810. The 6th was the “Marching Division,” mainly, I believe, so-called because down to Salamanca it was accompanying all Wellington’s great movements from north to south and south to north, yet never had the good fortune to get into the thick of the battle. At Salamanca, however, it had as much fighting as any man could crave. The note to the 7th Division, however, is very malicious, being “We have heard that there is a Seventh Division, but we have never seen it.” The fact is, that after its mishap at Fuentes, and some unsuccessful siege work at the second leaguer of Badajoz, this unit was very little engaged for two years. In 1813, however, it was gloriously prominent in the battles of the Pyrenees, and the dash at the French line, made by Barns’s brigade, was called by Wellington about the best and most effective attack that he had ever seen.
Rearrangement of Units
After the creation of the 7th Division in March, 1811, Wellington never again organized a new divisional unit. He received, of course, a great number of new battalions during the years 1811–12–13, but contented himself with adding them in ones or twos to existing brigades, or at most gave two or three of them as a fresh brigade to one of the old divisions. The former practice was the more usual: the only instances of the latter that I recall being that in 1812 the 1st Division got a second Guards brigade, and in 1813 a new line brigade (Lord Aylmer’s) from reinforcements that had just come out. The increase of the total number of battalions at the front was not so great as might have been expected, because from time to time corps that had got thinned down almost to the point of extinction, were sent back to England to be recruited and reorganized. The number of British battalions (including the King’s German Legion and two other foreign corps) with Wellington’s field army in March, 1811, was fifty-eight; in March, 1814, it was no more than sixty-five, a gain of only seven units. There had been a considerable exchange of service between the 1st and 2nd battalion of regiments—in several cases when the 2nd battalion had been the original unit in the Peninsular Army, it went home when the first battalion came out, returning as a mere cadre of officers and sergeants, after turning over its serviceable rank and file to the newly-arrived sister unit.[160]
There was only two more considerable rearrangements of the internal organization of a division. One took place in May, 1811, owing to the fearful losses suffered by the 2nd Division at Albuera. Of the seven battalions forming the brigades of Colborne and Hoghton, which had been so dreadfully mauled in holding the all-important heights, two were sent home, and the four others shrank into a single brigade. To fill the place of the vanished unit a whole brigade (Howard’s) was transferred from the 1st to the 2nd Division, and became part of it for the rest of the war. There was also a shifting about of two brigades from one unit to another during the winter of 1812–13, after the Burgos retreat.
The normal divisional organization, however, remained unchanged from 1811 onwards, viz. with three exceptions, each division for the remaining three years of the war consisted of two British brigades and one Portuguese, the former having usually three battalions each, and the latter five. This rule worked for the 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th divisions. The Light Division, smaller than the rest, had only three (or three and a half) British battalions, and two of Portuguese caçadores. The 1st Division alone had no Portuguese attached, but one of its three (after 1813 four) brigades was foreign, consisting of the line battalions of the King’s German Legion. The 2nd Division (as explained above) had three British brigades and no Portuguese, but to it was attached Hamilton’s (and in 1812–14 Ashworth’s) Portuguese, so that it did not vary from the normal arrangement so much as the 1st Division.