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

by William Francis Patrick Napier

On the 8th Bonet arrived, and the French marshal, extending his right to Toro, commenced repairing the bridge there. Wellington, in like manner, stretched his left to the Guarena, keeping his centre still on the Trabancos and his right at Rueda, with posts near Tordesillas and the ford of Pollos. In this situation the armies remained for some days, during which Graham and Picton went to England in bad health, and the principal powder magazine at Salamanca exploded with hurt to many. No other events worth recording occurred. The weather was fine, the country rich, the troops received their rations regularly, and wine was so plentiful it was hard to keep the soldiers sober; the caves of Rueda, natural or cut in the rock below the surface of the earth, were so immense, and held so much wine, that the drunkards of two armies failed to make any very sensible diminution in the quantity, and many men perished in that labyrinth. The soldiers of each army also, passing the Duero in groups, held amicable intercourse, conversing of battles that were yet to be fought, and the camps on the banks of the Duero seemed at times to belong to one general, so difficult is it to make brave men hate each other.

To the officers of the allies all looked prosperous, they were impatient for the signal of battle, and many complained that the French had been permitted to retreat from Christoval; had Wellington been finally forced back to Portugal, his reputation would have been grievously assailed by his own people. The majority, peering forward with misty political vision, overlooked the difficulties close at hand, but their general was fretted with care and mortification, for all cross and evil circumstances seemed to combine against him. The Spanish coöperation had failed in all quarters, the enemy in front was growing stronger, Soult was seriously menacing Cadiz, and the king was said to have been joined by Drouet; the Portuguese troops were deserting in great numbers from misery; the English government had absurdly and perniciously interfered with the supply of the military chest; there was no money and the personal resources of Wellington alone kept the army in its forward position. “I have never,” said he, “been in such distress as at present, and some serious misfortune must happen if the government do not attend seriously to the subject and supply us regularly with money. The arrears and distresses of the Portuguese government are a joke to ours, and if our credit was not better than theirs we should certainly starve. As it is, if we don’t find means to pay our bills for butcher’s meat there will be an end to the war at once.”

Thus stript as it were to the skin, he was going once more to hide his nakedness in the mountains of Portugal, when Marmont, proud of his own unripened skill, and perhaps, from the experience of San Christoval, undervaluing his adversary’s tactics; desirous also, it was said, to gain a victory without the presence of a king; Marmont, pushed on by fate, madly broke the chain which restrained his enemy’s strength.

To understand the remarkable movements which were now about to commence, it must be borne in mind that the French army, while the harvest was on the ground, had no regard to lines of communication; it had supports on all sides, and the troops were taught to reap the standing corn, and grind it themselves if their cavalry could not seize flour in the villages. This organization, approaching the ancient Roman military perfection, baffled the irregular, and threw the regular force of the allies entirely upon the defensive; their flanks once turned a retreat must follow to save the communications; but the French offered no point for retaliation. Wherefore, with a force composed of four different nations, Wellington was to make difficult evolutions in an open country, his only chances of success being the casual errors of his adversary, an able general, who knew the country perfectly and had troops well disciplined, and of one nation. The game would have been quite unequal if the English had not been so strong in cavalry.

In the course of the 15th and 16th Marmont, who had previously made deceptive movements, concentrated his beautiful and gallant army on its right towards Toro, which place, intercepted letters, reports of deserters and the talk of the peasants, had for several days assigned as his point of passage. On the morning of the 16th English exploring officers, passing the Duero near Tordesillas, found only the garrison there, and in the evening the reports stated, that two French divisions had already crossed by the bridge of Toro; wherefore Wellington united his centre and left at Canizal, on the Guarena, during the night, intending to attack; but as he had still some doubts of the real object, he left Sir Stapleton Cotton on the Trabancos with the right wing, composed of the fourth and light divisions and Anson’s cavalry. Suddenly Marmont recalled his troops, returned to Tordesillas and Pollos, passed the Duero and concentrated at Nava del Rey in the evening of the 17th, some of his men having marched forty, some fifty miles without a halt. Wellington was then near Toro, and Cotton remained behind the Trabancos during the night without orders, in a bad position; Wellington however hastened to his aid, bringing up Bock’s, Le Marchant’s, and Alten’s cavalry, while the fifth division took post six miles in rear of the Trabancos.

Combats of Castrejon and the Guarena. (July, 1812.)

At daybreak Cotton’s outposts were driven in, yet the bulk of his cavalry and a troop of horse artillery showed a front, having the two infantry divisions in support; the fourth behind his left, the light division behind his right, but widely separated by a valley. The country was open, like the downs of England, with here and there water-gullies, dry hollows and naked heads of land, behind one of which, on the other side of the Trabancos, lay the French army. Cotton, seeing only horsemen, pushed his cavalry towards the river, advancing cautiously by his right along some high table-land, where his troops were lost at first in the morning fog, then thick on the stream. Very soon the deep tones of artillery shook the ground, the sharp ring of musketry was heard in the mist, and the 43rd Regiment was hastily brought through the village of Castrejon to support the advancing cavalry; for besides the deep valley separating the fourth from the light division, there was a ravine with a marshy bottom between the cavalry and infantry, and the village furnished the only good passage.

The cannonade became heavy, and the spectacle surprisingly beautiful. The lighter smoke and mist, mingling and curling in fantastic pillars, formed a huge and glittering dome tinged with many colours by the rising sun, and through the gross vapour below the restless horsemen were seen or lost, as the fume thickened from the rapid play of the artillery; the bluff head of land beyond the Trabancos, now covered with French troops, appeared by an optical deception close at hand, dilated to the size of a mountain, and crowned with gigantic soldiers, who were continually breaking off and sliding down into the fight. Suddenly a dismounted English cavalry officer stalked from the midst of the smoke towards the line of infantry; his gait was peculiarly rigid, and he appeared to hold a bloody handkerchief to his heart; but that which seemed a cloth was a broad and dreadful wound: a bullet had entirely effaced the flesh from his left shoulder and breast and carried away part of his ribs, his heart was bared and its movement plainly discerned. It was a piteous and yet a noble sight, for his countenance though ghastly was firm, his step scarcely indicated weakness, and his voice never faltered. This unyielding man’s name was Williams. He died a short distance from the field of battle, it was said in the arms of his son, a youth of fourteen, who had followed his father to the Peninsula in hopes of obtaining a commission, for they were not in affluent circumstances.

Cotton maintained this exposed position until seven o’clock, when Wellington and Beresford came up, and both were like to have been slain together. For a squadron of French cavalry, breaking away from the head of land beyond the Trabancos, had just before come with such speed across the valley that it was for a moment thought they were deserting; but with headlong course they mounted the table-land on which Cotton’s left wing was posted, and drove a whole line of British cavalry skirmishers back in confusion. The reserves then came up from Alaejos, and these furious swordmen, scattered in all directions, were in turn driven away or cut down; yet thirty or forty, led by their gallant officer, suddenly appeared above the ravine separating the British wings, just as Wellington and Beresford arrived on the slope beneath them. Some infantry picquets were in the bottom, higher up were two guns covered by a squadron of light cavalry disposed in perfect order, and when the French officer saw this squadron he reined in his horse with difficulty, his men gathering in a confused body round him; they seemed lost, but their daring leader waving his sword soused down with a shout on the English troopers, who turning, galloped through the guns, and the whole mass, friends and enemies, went like a whirlwind to the bottom, carrying away in the tumult Wellington and Beresford. The French horsemen were now quite exhausted and a reserve of heavy dragoons cut most of them to pieces; yet their invincible leader, assaulted by three enemies at once, struck one dead from his horse, and with surprising exertions saved himself from the others, though they rode hewing at him on each side for a quarter of a mile.

Scarcely was this over when Marmont, having ascertained that a part only of Wellington’s army was before him, crossed the Trabancos in two columns, and penetrating between the light and fourth divisions marched straight upon the Guarena. The British retired in three columns, the light division being between the fifth division and the French, close to the latter, the cavalry on the flanks and rear. The air was extremely sultry, the dust rose in clouds, and the close order of the troops was rendered very oppressive by a siroc wind; but where the light division marched the military spectacle was strange and grand. Hostile columns of infantry, only half musket-shot from each other, were marching impetuously towards a common goal, the officers on each side pointing forwards with their swords, or touching their caps and waving their hands in courtesy, while the German cavalry, huge men, on huge horses, rode between in a close compact body as if to prevent a collision: at times the loud tones of command to hasten the march were heard passing from the front to the rear on both sides, and now and then the rush of French bullets came sweeping over the columns, whose violent pace was continually accelerated.