The Story of Wellington

by Harold Wheeler

The advanced guard reached Vendas Novas on the following day, and drove in the outposts of the French advanced guard. The latter were vigorously attacked in the woods and village, and defeated with considerable loss. All this augured well for the ensuing operations, and on the 12th the vanguard reached the southern bank of the Douro. The French were stationed on the opposite bank, having taken the precaution to burn the bridge after crossing, and to withdraw all the boats they could discover.

Unfortunate in this matter, Wellesley was favoured in another. His army was screened by cliffs and a hill called the Serra. This bold rock was surmounted by a Franciscan convent, where the Commander posted batteries and made his observations. As the river winds a great deal, his movements were unobserved by those on the look-out at the French headquarters, to the left of Wellesley as he peered through his glass across the wide waterway. He had already perceived an extensive building, known as the Seminary, surrounded by high walls with but one entrance on the landward side, and open to the river. This he knew would be an excellent position to secure, especially as it was almost opposite to him.

There was in the army a certain Colonel Waters, a keen-eyed officer with an infinite amount of resource and a ready wit. He contended that it was scarcely probable that Soult could have secured every boat, and interrogated a refugee on the point. He found that the man had crossed in a small skiff.[50] With the aid of the prior of Amarante, the fugitive, and several peasants, he heaved the boat out of the mud, and, crossing the stream, brought back a number of barges. In these three companies of the Buffs, under Lieut.-General Paget, effected a landing on the opposite side. This excellent officer was seriously wounded almost immediately afterward, but the passage of the Douro had been secured.

General Murray, who had been ordered to cross at Barca d’Avintas, also managed to get over, and signally failed to check the retiring columns after the battle. As additional troops gained the opposite shore the French made repeated attempts to hurl them back, but were ultimately obliged to retreat “in the utmost confusion” towards Amarante. According to a letter from General Stewart to his brother, Lord Castlereagh, the French fled with such haste that “Sir Arthur Wellesley dined at their headquarters on the dinner which had been prepared for Marshal Soult.”

On the 19th May, Soult was across the frontier, having been compelled to abandon over fifty guns and his baggage. In making his way across the Sierra Catalina to escape the pursuing troops, his rear-guard was defeated at Salamonde, with severe loss. He eventually reached Orense, in Galicia, minus some 5000 men, including the sick and wounded he had left behind him in Oporto.

“The road from Penafiel to Montealegre,” says Wellesley, “is strewed with the carcases of horses and mules, and of French soldiers, who were put to death by the peasantry before our advanced guard could save them. This last circumstance is the natural effect of the species of warfare which the enemy have carried on in this country. Their soldiers have plundered and murdered the peasantry at their pleasure; and I have seen many persons hanging in the trees by the sides of the road, executed for no reason that I could learn, excepting that they have not been friendly to the French invasion and usurpation of the government of their country; and the route of their column, on their retreat, could be traced by the smoke of the villages to which they set fire.”

Within a fortnight Wellesley was writing of the defects of his own men. “I have long been of opinion,” he says, “that a British army could bear neither success nor failure, and I have had manifest proofs of the truth of this opinion in the first of its branches in the recent conduct of the soldiers of this army. They have plundered the country most terribly, which has given me the greatest concern....

“They have plundered the people of bullocks, among other property, for what reason I am sure I do not know, except it be, as I understand is their practice, to sell them to the people again. I shall be very much obliged to you if you will mention this practice to the Ministers of the Regency, and bid them to issue a proclamation forbidding the people, in the most positive terms, to purchase any thing from the soldiers of the British army.”

The Commander-in-Chief relates the same terrible facts to Castlereagh. “The army behave terribly ill,” is his expression. “They are a rabble who cannot bear success any more than Sir J. Moore’s army could bear failure. I am endeavoring to tame them; but, if I should not succeed, I must make an official complaint of them, and send one or two corps home in disgrace. They plunder in all directions.”

Meanwhile Victor, far from taking Badajoz and marching on Seville as the Emperor wished, had found it necessary to move in the direction of Madrid, where he could secure much needed assistance. He therefore took up his position at Talavera. Wellesley, intent upon crushing him, arrived at Abrantes about the same time as the Marshal was evacuating Estremadura and consequently abandoning the fruits of his victory over Cuesta at Medellin. For Wellesley to have followed Victor with the relatively few men at his disposal would have been to court disaster, and he therefore acquiesced in a new plan of operations suggested by Cuesta, in which the Spaniards were to be given an opportunity of showing their capabilities or proving their incapacity. This, says Professor Oman, was “the first and only campaign which he ever undertook in company with a Spanish colleague and without supreme control over the whole conduct of affairs.”