The battles of the British Army

by Robert Melvin Blackwood

In a military view, Massena’s retreat was admirable, and reflected infinite credit on the generals who directed it; but, in a moral one, nothing could be more disgraceful. The country over which the retreating columns of the French army passed, was marked by bloodshed and devastation. Villages were everywhere destroyed, property wasted or carried off, the men shot in sheer wantonness, the women villainously abused, while thousands were driven for shelter to the mountains, where many perished from actual want. With gothic barbarity the fine old city of Leria, and the church and convent of Alcabaca, with its library and relics, were ordered by Massena to be burned. The order was too faithfully executed; and places, for centuries objects of Portuguese veneration, were given to the flames; and those hallowed roofs, beneath which “the sage had studied and the saint had prayed,” were reduced to ashes, to gratify a ruthless and vindictive spirit of revenge.

The French soldiers had been so long accustomed to plunder, that they proceeded in their researches for booty of every kind upon a regular system. They were provided with tools for the work of pillage, and every piece of furniture in which places of concealment could be constructed they broke open from behind, so that no valuables could be hidden from them by any contrivance of that kind. Having satisfied themselves that nothing was secreted above ground, they proceeded to examine whether there was any new masonry, or if any part of the cellar or ground floor had been disturbed; if it appeared uneven, they dug there; where there was no such indication they poured water, and if it were absorbed in one place faster than another, there they broke the earth. There were men who at the first glance could pronounce whether anything had been buried beneath the soil, and when they probed with an iron rod, or, in default of it, with sword or bayonet, it was found that they were seldom mistaken in their judgment. The habit of living by prey called forth, as in beasts, a faculty of discovering it; there was one soldier whose scent became so acute that if he approached the place where wine had been concealed, he would go unerringly to the spot.

Wherever the French bivouacked the scene was such as might rather have been looked for in a camp of predatory Tartars than in that of a civilised people. Food and forage, and skins of wine, and clothes and church vestments, books and guitars, and all the bulkier articles of wasteful spoil were heaped together in their huts with the planks and doors of the habitations which they had demolished. Some of the men, retaining amid this brutal service the characteristic activity and cleverness of their nation, fitted up their huts with hangings from their last scene of pillage, with a regard to comfort hardly to have been expected in their situation, and a love of gaiety only to be found in Frenchmen.

Such was the condition of things with the main army when the famous battle of Barosa was fought by a different section of the British army at some distance.

An Anglo-Spanish army was attempting to raise the siege of Cadiz. All bade fair for success, as the French had scarcely ten thousand men in their lines, while in the city the Spanish force was more than twenty thousand. On this occasion, Graham acted under the command of La Pena, and eleven thousand allied troops were despatched from Cadiz to Tarifa, to operate against the enemy’s rear at Chiclana; while it was arranged that Zayas, who commanded in the Isle de Leon, should pass his troops over San Petri near the sea, and unite in a combined attack.

After much delay, occasioned by tempestuous weather, the troops and artillery were safely assembled at Tarifa on the 27th; and when joined by the 28th regiment and the flank companies of the 9th and 82nd, they numbered about four thousand five hundred effective men.

General La Pena arrived the same day with seven thousand Spaniards; and on the next, the united force moved through the passes of the Ronda hills, and halted within four leagues of the French outposts. The commands of the allies were thus distributed—the vanguard to Lardizable, the centre to the Prince of Anglona, the reserve to General Graham, and the cavalry to Colonel Whittingham.

Victor, the French commander, though apprised of the activity of the Spaniards, and the march of General Graham, could not correctly ascertain the point upon which their intended operations would be directed; and therefore, with eleven thousand choice troops, he took post in observation between the roads of Conil and Medina.

On the 2nd April, the capture of Casa Viejas, increased La Pena’s force by sixteen hundred infantry, and a number of guerilla horse. Until the 5th, he continued his movements, and, after his advanced guard had been roughly handled by a squadron of French dragoons, he halted on the Cerro de Puerco, more generally and gloriously known as the heights of Barosa.

Barosa, though not a high hill, rises considerably above the rugged plain it overlooks, and stands four miles inland from the debouchement of the Santi Petri. The plain is bounded on the right by the forest of Chiclana, on the left by cliffs on the sea-beach, and on the centre by a pine wood, beyond which the hill of Bermeja rises.