Two brigades of the fourth division were present, one of Portuguese under General Harvey, the other under Sir William Myers, composed of the 7th and 23rd Regiments, was called the fusileer brigade. Harvey, pushing between Lumley’s cavalry and the hill, was charged by some French horse and beat them off, while Cole led the fusileers up the contested height. At this time six guns were in the enemy’s possession, Werlé’s reserve was pressing forward to reinforce the French front, and the remnant of Houghton’s brigade could no longer maintain its ground, the field was heaped with carcasses, the lancers were riding furiously about the captured artillery on the upper parts of the hill, and Hamilton’s Portuguese and Alten’s Germans, withdrawing from the bridge, seemed to be in full retreat. Soon however Cole’s fusileers, flanked by a battalion of the Lusitanian legion under Colonel Hawkshawe, surmounted the hill, drove off the lancers, recovered five guns and one colour, and passed the right of Houghton’s brigade, precisely as Abercrombie passed its left.
Such a gallant line, issuing from the midst of the smoke and rapidly separating itself from the confused and broken multitude, startled the enemy’s masses, then augmenting and pressing onwards as to an assured victory; they wavered, hesitated, and vomiting forth a storm of fire hastily endeavoured to enlarge their front, while a fearful discharge of grape from all their artillery whistled through the British ranks. Myers was killed, Cole, the three colonels, Ellis, Blakeney and Hawkshawe fell wounded, and the fusileer battalions, struck by the iron tempest, reeled and staggered like sinking ships: but suddenly and sternly recovering they closed on their terrible enemies, and then was seen with what a strength and majesty the British soldier fights. In vain did Soult with voice and gesture animate his Frenchmen; in vain did the hardiest veterans, breaking from the crowded columns, sacrifice their lives to gain time for the mass to open out on such a fair field; in vain did the mass itself bear up, and fiercely striving fire indiscriminately upon friends and foes, while the horsemen hovering on the flank threatened to charge the advancing line. Nothing could stop that astonishing infantry. No sudden burst of undisciplined valour, no nervous enthusiasm weakened the stability of their order, their flashing eyes were bent on the dark columns in their front, their measured tread shook the ground, their dreadful volleys swept away the head of every formation, their deafening shouts overpowered the dissonant cries that broke from all parts of the tumultuous crowd, as slowly and with a horrid carnage it was pushed by the incessant vigour of the attack to the farthest edge of the height. There the French reserve, mixing with the struggling multitude, endeavoured to restore the fight but only augmented the irremediable disorder, and the mighty mass giving way like a loosened cliff went headlong down the steep: the rain flowed after in streams discoloured with blood, and eighteen hundred unwounded men, the remnant of six thousand unconquerable British soldiers, stood triumphant on the fatal hill!
While the fusileers were battling above, the cavalry and Harvey’s brigade advanced, and Latour Maubourg’s dragoons, battered also by Lefebre’s guns, retired before them, yet still threatening the fusileers with their right, and with their left preventing Lumley falling on the defeated infantry. The crisis was however past, and Beresford, seeking to profit from the circumstances of the moment, made Alten retake Albuera, supported him with Blake’s first line, which had not been engaged, and quickly brought up Hamilton’s and Collins’s Portuguese, ten thousand fresh men, to strengthen the fusileers and Abercrombie’s brigade. But so rapid was the execution of the last, the enemy was never attained by these reserves, which yet suffered severely, for Ruty having set the French guns altogether, worked them with prodigious activity while the fifth corps was still making head, and when the day was irrevocably lost, he regained the other side of the Albuera and protected the passage of the broken infantry.
Beresford, too hardly handled to pursue, now formed a front with the Portuguese parallel to the heights where Soult’s troops were rallying, and though the action continued a short time after at the bridge, all was terminated before three o’clock. The serious fighting had endured only four hours, and in that time seven thousand allies and above eight thousand of their adversaries were struck down. Three French generals were wounded, two slain, and eight hundred soldiers so badly hurt as to be left on the field. On Beresford’s side only two thousand Spaniards and six hundred Germans and Portuguese were killed or wounded, and with what resolution the pure British fought was thus made manifest, for they had but eighteen hundred men left standing! The laurel is nobly won when the exhausted victor reels as he places it on his bleeding front. The French took five hundred unwounded prisoners, a howitzer and several stand of colours. The British had no trophy to boast of, but the horrid piles of carcasses within their lines told with dreadful eloquence who were the conquerors, and all that night the rain poured down, and the river and the hills and the woods resounded with the dismal clamour and groans of dying men.
Beresford was oppressed with the number of his wounded, far exceeding the sound amongst the British soldiers. When the picquets were posted few remained to help the sufferers, and in this cruel distress he sent Hardinge to demand assistance from Blake; but wrath and mortified pride were predominant with that general; he refused, saying, it was customary with allies for each to take care of their own men. Yet the British had fought for Spain.
Morning came and both armies remained in their respective situations, the wounded still covering the field of battle, the hostile lines still menacing and dangerous. The greater number had fallen with the French, the best soldiers with the allies, and Soult’s dark masses of cavalry and artillery, covering all his front, seemed able alone to contend again for victory. The right of the French appeared also to threaten the Badajos road, and Beresford in gloom and doubt awaited another attack; soon however the third brigade of the fourth division came up from Jerumenha, and then the second division retook its old ground between the Valverde and Badajos roads: on the 18th Soult retreated.
He left to English generosity several hundred men too deeply wounded to be removed, but all those who could travel he had, in the night of the 17th, sent by the royal road of Monasterio to Seville; and now, protecting his movements with his horsemen and six battalions of infantry, he filed his right on to the road of Solano. When this flank march was completed, Latour Maubourg covered the rear with the heavy dragoons, while Briché protected the march of the wounded men by the royal road.
Beresford sent Hamilton to re-invest Badajos, and the whole of his cavalry, supported by Alten’s Germans, after the French; but soon Wellington, hurrying from the north, reached the field of battle and directed him to follow the enemy cautiously in person, while the third and seventh divisions, just come down from the Coa, completed the reinvestment of the fortress.
Soult now took a permanent position at Llerena, to await the junction of Drouet’s division and reinforcements from Andalusia, resolved to contend again for Badajos. Meanwhile his cavalry advanced to Usagre designing to scour the country beyond; but the only outlet from that place was a bridge over a river with steep banks, which the French general Bron passed rashly with two regiments and being charged by General Lumley lost two hundred men. This terminated Beresford’s operations. The miserable state to which the Regency had reduced the Portuguese troops required his presence at Lisbon and General Hill succeeded to his command.