The Portuguese Officers
Yet according to those who had the working of the newly organized army in their hands, the effect was very satisfactory. “The Portuguese captains are piqued into activity and attention, when they see their companies excelled in efficiency by those under English, and do from emulation what a sense of duty would never, perhaps, bring them to. There are a variety of oblique means and by-paths by which the parts of a Portuguese corps are constantly, and almost insensibly, tending to return to their old habits, to which they are so much attached. To nip this tendency, from time to time, in the bud, it is necessary to be aware of it: without the constant surveillance of English subordinate officers (who ever mingling with the mass of the men cannot but be aware of what is going on) the commanding officer can rarely be warned in time.”[244] D’Urban, the author of this memorandum, adds that one of his great difficulties was to secure that the junior officers of the old noble families were kept up to their work. “Even supposing a sufficient energy of character in a native officer, he does not, and will not, unless he be a fidalgo himself, exercise coercive or strong measures to oblige one of that class to do his duty. He is aware that by doing so he will make a powerful enemy, and all the habits of thought in which he has been educated inspire him with such a dread of this, that no sense of duty will urge him to encounter it. Whenever a regiment is commanded by a non-fidalgo it never fails to suffer extremely: the noblemen are permitted to do as they please, and set a very bad example.” The only remedy was to see that any regiment where the fidalgos were numerous had an English colonel.
Such were the difficulties under which Beresford and the body of picked British officers whom he selected as his subordinates built up the army, which by 1811 was fit to take its place in battle line along with its allies, and in 1812–14 did some of the most brilliant service of the Peninsular War. Some of the exploits of the Portuguese brigades hardly obtain in Napier’s history the prominence that is their due. While he acknowledges the good service of the Light Division caçadores at Bussaco and elsewhere, there is scarcely praise enough given to Harvey’s brigade at Albuera, who received and repulsed in line the charge of Latour-Maubourg’s dragoons, a feat of which any British troops would have been proud. And the desperate resistance for many hours of Ashworth’s Portuguese at St. Pierre near Bayonne is hardly noticed with sufficient gratitude—forming the centre of Hill’s thin line, pressed upon by overwhelming numbers, and with both flanks turned from time to time, they fought out a whole long morning of battle, and never gave way an inch, though their line was reduced to a thin chain of skirmishers scattered along a hedge and a coppice. The advance of the 13th and 24th Portuguese at the storm of St. Sebastian, across a ford 200 yards wide and waist-deep, swept by artillery fire from end to end, does however receive from Napier its due meed of admiration. This was a great achievement—every wounded man was doomed to drowning: on the other side was the blazing breach, where the British assault had come to a dead stop after dreadful slaughter, but the Portuguese regiments won their way over the deadly water, and took their share in the final assault with unflinching courage.
On the whole, the caçador battalions had the finest record in the Portuguese Army, the cavalry the least satisfactory. Some good work is recorded of them, e.g. the charge of Madden’s squadrons saved the whole of La Romana’s army at the combat of Fuente del Maestre in 1810, and that of D’Urban’s brigade gave efficient help to Pakenham’s great flank attack at Salamanca in 1812. But there were some “untoward incidents,” such as the general bolt at the battle of the Gebora, and the panic at the combat of Majadahonda, just before Wellington’s entry into Madrid. Of the last D’Urban writes,[245] “My poor fellows are still a most daily and uncertain sort of fighting people. At Salamanca they followed me into the enemy’s ranks like British dragoons; yesterday they were so far from doing their duty that in the first charge they just went far enough to land me in the enemy’s ranks. In the second, which (having got them rallied) I rashly attempted, I could not get them within 20 yards of the enemy—they left me alone, and vanished before the French helmets like leaves before the autumn wind. They require a little incentive of shouts, and the inspiring cheers of a British line advancing near them. I am afraid they will never be quite safe by themselves, or in silence.” These are bitter words, but the record of Majadahonda is not a creditable one.
The Portuguese Militia
Of the Portuguese militia and the irregular levies of the Ordenança it is not necessary to speak here at length. They formed part of Wellington’s tools for carrying on the war, but not of his army. For, excepting in the Lines of Torres Vedras, he never put the militia side by side with the regulars, but always left them out in the open country, to watch frontiers or harass French lines of communication. They were under strict orders not to fight—orders which enterprising officers like Silveira and Trant sometimes disobeyed, to their own sorrow. Their duty was to screen the countryside against small French detachments, to make the movement of the enemy save in large bodies impossible, to capture convoys, or to cut off stragglers. Their most brilliant exploit was the capture of Masséna’s hospitals at Coimbra in 1810. More could not be expected from levies only intermittently under arms, not furnished with proper uniforms, and officered by civilians, or by the inefficients weeded out of the regular army. They were a valuable asset in Wellington’s hands, but not a real fighting force. Even far on in the war, so late as 1812, whole brigades of them broke up in panic in face of a very small force of cavalry—as at the unhappy combat of Guarda, where Trant and Wilson tried to do too much with these amateurs.
As to the ordenança or levée en masse, it had not even the organization of the militia, and was largely armed with pikes for want of muskets. Its only duty was to infest the countryside and prevent the enemy from foraging. The French shot them as “brigands” whenever caught; it was their natural practice to retaliate by making away with all stragglers and marauders who fell into their hands. Wellington offered a bounty for prisoners, but it was not very often asked for, or paid.
CHAPTER XIV
DISCIPLINE AND COURT-MARTIALS
In the chapters that dealt with the officers and the men of the Peninsular Army, we have had occasion to speak of the percentage of undesirables that were to be found in every rank, and of their special weaknesses and crimes. It is necessary to explain the way in which the British military code of the day dealt with them.