It would not be quite accurate to say that a British brigade always had precisely three battalions. Several had four, one five, a few appeared with only two, but Wellington generally made these last up to the three-battalion total as soon as he was able, save in two cases. In the Guards brigades of the 1st Division the two battalions were always so strong that between them they gave 1800 or 2000 bayonets at the beginning of a campaign—which was as much as most three-battalion brigades produced. Moreover, there was an objection to brigading together units of the Guards and of the line. In the Light Division the 1/43rd and 1/52nd were also very strong and well recruited: each formed the nucleus of a small brigade, of which the rest was composed of a Portuguese caçador battalion and a certain number (often six) companies of the 95th Rifles.
The Anglo-Portuguese Division
Roughly speaking, then, an Anglo-Portuguese division usually amounted to something under 6000 men, save the Light Division, which numbered under 4000, and the 1st Division, which in 1810, and again in 1813, had four brigades, and over 7000 men. Of the 5500 or 5800 men in one of the normal divisions about 3500 were British and 2000 (or a little more) Portuguese. The 2nd Division, however, was a double-unit, with 5500 British, and attached to it 6500 of Hamilton’s and Ashworth’s Portuguese.
The mixture of nationalities in the divisions, normal with the infantry, was nearly unknown in the cavalry arm. The very few Portuguese regiments which took the field—never more than seven, I believe—often four only—were normally kept separate. Wellington, for the first three years of the war, had so few cavalry regiments of either nation that there was no possibility of dividing them into divisions. In 1809, as has been already stated,[161] there were only in the Peninsula six British cavalry regiments, divided into three weak brigades. Only one more corps joined them in 1810, and in the spring campaigns of 1811, when he had left three regiments with Beresford in the south, he had only four to take with him for the pursuit of Masséna and the battle of Fuentes de Oñoro—a miserable provision—1500 sabres for an army of over 30,000 men, about a fourth of the proper proportion in those days.
It was not till later in 1811 that Wellington got cavalry reinforcements which more than doubled his mounted strength, bringing him up to fifteen regiments of British and German horse. He did then at last divide them into two divisions, one of eleven regiments, which followed his main army, the other of four regiments only, which he left with Hill in Estremadura. But no Portuguese regiments were put into either—though he took one brigade with himself (D’Urban’s) for the Salamanca campaign, and left two brigades (or four regiments) with the southern force (those of Otway and Madden).
But the organization in two cavalry divisions was dropped in the spring of 1813—Wellington had had sickening experience of the incapacity of General Erskine, who commanded the small second division, and, Erskine being now dead, for the rest of the war all the seven cavalry brigades were theoretically again made into one division, under Wellington’s chosen cavalry leader, Sir Stapleton Cotton. As a matter of fact, Cotton was not allowed any independent command of them, and the brigades were moved in twos and threes under the direct orders of the commander-in-chief. Wellington never used his cavalry in mass for any great separate manœuvre. He employed them for scouting, for covering his front, and for protecting his flanks, sometimes (but rarely and in small units) for a blow in battle, such as that which Le Marchant’s heavy dragoons gave at Salamanca, or Bock’s Germans at Garcia Hernandez on the following day. But of this we have already spoken when dealing with the general character of Wellington’s tactics.
Distribution of Batteries
The rule of the combination of British and Portuguese units which prevailed in the infantry, though not in the cavalry, was to be found in the artillery also. In 1810, when Wellington drafted a Portuguese brigade of foot into each of his divisions, he also attached to several of them batteries of Portuguese artillery. So small was his allowance of British gunners, that in 1811, when he had created his two last infantry divisions, he would not have been able to provide one field battery for each of his eight units, unless he had drawn largely for help on his allies. At the time of Fuentes de Oñoro and Albuera there were in the field only three British horse artillery batteries (attached to the cavalry and the Light Division) and five British field batteries attached to infantry divisions. The 3rd and 7th Divisions had only Portuguese guns allotted to them. But by utilizing the very efficient artillery of the allied nation, to the extent of eight units, Wellington was able to put thirteen field batteries in line, which enabled him to provide the 2nd, 3rd, 5th, 6th, and Hamilton’s Portuguese divisions with two batteries apiece, the 1st, 4th, and 7th with one each. The two nations were worked as successfully in unison in the artillery as in the infantry organization.
Owing to the arrival of new batteries from home Wellington was able, in 1812, not only to allot one or two field batteries to every division except the Light (which kept its old horse artillery troop, that of Major Ross), but to collect a small reserve which belonged to the whole army and not to any particular division. In 1813–14 he was stronger still, though the mass of guns of which he could dispose was never so powerful in proportion to his whole army as that which Napoleon habitually employed.