English Battles and Sieges in the Peninsula. / Extracted from his 'Peninsula War'.

by William Francis Patrick Napier

All the cavalry with the army—a single squadron under Col. Taylor—was placed at the egress from the plain, on the direct road to Torres Vedras; but from the counter hills, facing the position, another road, running from Torres Vedras to Lourinham, led at the distance of two miles round the left, and by it an enemy could gain the ridge where the picquets were posted, seize the artillery and commissariat stores in the plain, and take the central hill and right-hand mountain in reverse.

In the night of the 20th a German officer of cavalry aroused Sir Arthur Wellesley, saying the French army, twenty thousand strong, was within an hour’s march. Incredulous of this tale, the bearer of which was in evident consternation, he merely took some additional precautions; and at sunrise all eyes were turned southward, seeking an enemy who was not to be seen. Nevertheless the German’s report was only an exaggeration.[1] Junot had been in march all night with fourteen, not twenty, thousand men, designing to fall on at daybreak; but the rugged ways had retarded his progress, and his vanguard of cavalry did not crown the hills facing the English position before eight o’clock—the dust of its march having been discovered an hour before. Had he arrived by daybreak this dust could not have been observed, and an hour of preparation would have been lost to the English general, which, with a good plan of battle, would have enabled the French to gain the left-hand ridge, by the Lourinham road, before the troops on the right could cross to occupy that part of the position.

Junot employed little time to note his adversary’s ground and dispositions, and entirely neglected the mountain on the English right, as being refused to his line of march; but as the left-hand ridge appeared naked of troops, he resolved to seize it by a detachment, and take the English central hill in reverse while he attacked it in front with his main body, thinking he should find the bulk of the army there. In this view he directed General Brennier with a brigade across the ravine covering the ridge, and Laborde with another against the central hill, supporting the latter with Loison’s division, a reserve of grenadiers under Kellermann, and the cavalry, thirteen hundred strong, under Margaron.

To act on conjecture is dangerous in war. Junot conjectured falsely, and his entire disregard of the English right was a great error; for when his cavalry crowned the counter hills, Sir A. Wellesley, seeing the movements did not menace that part of his position, retained there one brigade under General Hill to serve as a support to the centre, while four other brigades were sent across the plain to occupy the left-hand ridge, and a fifth, reinforced with Trant’s Portuguese, moved to a parallel ridge in rear, where they could watch the Lourinham road.

All these movements were hidden from Junot by the central hill, and two brigades reached their ground before the action commenced; yet, knowing the ravine in front to be impracticable, they looked for an attack from the left, and formed two lines across the ridge, trusting to a chain of skirmishers to protect their right. The two other brigades were to have furnished a third line, but while they were passing the plain below the battle was begun in the centre with great fury.

In front of the English position the ground was so broken and wooded that the movements of the French, after they passed the counter hills, could not be discerned until they burst upon the centre in attack; and though their artillery was most numerous, the tormented ground impeded its action, while the English guns, of heavier metal, had free play: their infantry, inferior in number, would therefore have fought at great disadvantage, even if Junot’s combinations had not failed; but soon that general discovered the mischief of over-haste in war. Brennier found the bottom of the ravine impracticable, and floundering amidst rocks and the beds of torrents was unable to co-operate with Laborde; hence Junot had to reinforce the latter with Loison’s infantry, and detach another column of all arms under General Solignac to turn the English flank by the Lourinham road. But he did not perceive that Sir Arthur, anticipating such an effort, had there, not a flank but a front, three lines deep, while the fifth brigade and Trant’s Portuguese were so disposed, that Solignac, whose movement was isolated, could be cut off and placed between two fires.

Laborde and Loison opened three attacks, one principal, with minor bodies on the flanks. The first, being well led and covered by skirmishers, forced its way up with great vehemence and power, but with great loss also; for General Fane had called up the reserve artillery under Colonel Robe to reinforce the six guns already on the platform, and while they smote the column in front, another battery, belonging to one of the brigades then ascending the left-hand ridge, smote it in the right flank, and under this conjoint fire of artillery and a wasting musketry the French reached the summit, there to sustain a murderous volley, to be charged by the 50th Regiment, overturned, and driven down again.

Of the other two columns, the one assailing Anstruther’s brigade was beaten quickly, and that general had time to reinforce Fane’s left with the second battalion of the 43rd in opposition to Kellermann’s grenadiers, half of whom now reinforced the third column on that side. This regiment, posted in a churchyard on the edge of the declivity, had one or two companies in advance amongst some trees, and from thence the first burst of the grenadiers drove them upon the main body; but then Robe’s battery so smote the left of the French that they dipped into the ravine on their right, where the battery from the ridge caught them on the other flank; the moment was happily seized by the 43rd to pour down in a solid mass, and with ringing shouts it dashed against the column, driving it back with irrecoverable disorder: yet not without the fiercest fighting. The loss of the regiment was a hundred and twenty, and when the charge was over, a French soldier and the Sergeant Armourer, Patrick, were found grimly confronting each other in death as they had done in life, their hands still clutching their muskets, and their bayonets plunged to the sockets in each manly breast! It is by such men that thousands are animated and battles won.

Broken by these rough shocks, the French, to whom defeat was amazement, retired in confused masses and in a slanting direction towards the Lourinham road, and while thus disordered Colonel Taylor rode out upon them doing great execution; but as suddenly Margaron came down with his strong cavalry, and the gallant Englishman fell with most of his horsemen. However, half of Junot’s army was now beaten with the loss of seven guns, and though Margaron’s powerful cavalry, and that moiety of Kellermann’s grenadiers which had not been engaged, interposed to prevent pursuit, the line of retreat left the shortest road to Torres Vedras uncovered—a great fault which did not escape the English general’s rapid comprehension.

Brennier, unable to emerge from the rocks and hollows where he was entangled, had been of no weight in this action, but Solignac, having turned the ravine, appeared on the left about the time Taylor’s charge terminated the fight in the centre, and his division, strongly constituted with all arms, was advancing impetuously along the narrow ground, when General Ferguson, who was there in opposition, met him with a counter attack, so fierce, so rapid and sustained, that the French, though fighting stubbornly, bent to the strong pressure. Solignac was wounded, his cavalry, artillery and infantry, heaped together and out-flanked, were cut off from their line of retreat and forced into low ground on their right with a loss of six guns. These pieces, placed under guard of the 71st and 82nd while Ferguson continued his course, were again lost by one of those events which make battles the property of fortune; for Brennier, after long struggling, having worked up the ravine by his right to an accessible place, had ascended the ridge, and, unexpectedly falling upon the two regiments in charge of the captured guns, beat them back. He thus got behind Ferguson, and had time been given to reform his troops and assail that general’s rear mischief would have ensued; but the English regiments were disordered only for a moment; they rallied on higher ground, poured in their fire, broke the French brigade with a charge and made Brennier, who was wounded, a prisoner. Solignac’s division was then without resource, when suddenly another and more decisive change came over this fitful battle.