At sight of this new front, so deeply lined with troops, the French stopped short, and commenced a heavy cannonade, which did great execution from the closeness of the allied masses; but twelve British guns replied with vigour and the violence of the enemy’s fire abated; their cavalry then drew out of range, and a body of French infantry attempting to glide down the ravine of the Turones was repulsed by the riflemen and the light companies of the guards. But all this time a fierce battle was going on at Fuentes Onoro. Massena had directed Drouet to carry this village at the very moment when Montbrun’s cavalry should turn the right wing; it was, however, two hours later ere the attack commenced. The three British regiments made a desperate resistance, but overmatched in number, and little accustomed to the desultory fighting of light troops, they were pierced and divided; two companies of the seventy-ninth were taken, colonel Cameron was mortally wounded, and the lower part of the town was carried; the upper part was, however, stiffly held, and the rolling of the musketry was incessant.
Had the attack been made earlier, and the whole of Drouet’s division thrown frankly into the fight, while the sixth corps moving through the wood closely turned the village, the passage must have been forced and the left of the new position outflanked; but now lord Wellington having all his reserves in hand, detached considerable masses to the support of the regiments in Fuentes. The French continued also to reinforce their troops until the whole of the sixth corps and a part of Drouet’s division were engaged, when several turns of fortune occurred. At one time the fighting was on the banks of the stream and amongst the lower houses; at another upon the rugged heights and round the chapel, and some of the enemy’s skirmishers even penetrated completely through towards the main position; but the village was never entirely abandoned by the defenders, and, in a charge of the seventy-first, seventy-ninth, and eighty-eighth regiments, led by colonel M’Kinnon against a heavy mass which had gained the chapel eminence, a great number of the French fell. In this manner the fight lasted until evening, when the lower part of the town was abandoned by both parties, the British maintaining the chapel and crags, and the French retiring a cannon shot from the stream.
Vol. 3. Plate 11.
Battle of FUENTES ONORO
5TH MAY, 1811.
London Published by T. & W. Boone Novr 1830.
When the action ceased, a brigade of the light division relieved the regiments in the village; and a slight demonstration by the second corps near Fort Conception, having been repulsed by a battalion of the Lusitanian legion, both armies remained in observation. Fifteen hundred men and officers, of which three hundred were prisoners, constituted the loss of the allies; that of the enemy was estimated at the time to be near five thousand, but this exaggerated calculation was founded upon the erroneous supposition that four hundred dead were lying about Fuentes Onoro. All armies make rash estimates on such occasions. Having had charge to bury the carcasses at that point, I can affirm that, immediately about the village, not more than one hundred and thirty bodies were to be found, one-third of which were British.
During the battle, the French convoy for the supply of Almeida, being held at Gallegos, in readiness to move, lord Wellington sent Julian Sanchez from Frenada, to menace it, and to disturb the communication with Ciudad Rodrigo. This produced no effect, and a more decisive battle being expected on the 6th, the light division made breast-works amongst the crags of Fuentes Onoro, while lord Wellington entrenched that part of the position, which was immediately behind this village, so that the carrying of it would have scarcely benefitted the enemy. Fuentes Onoro, strictly speaking, was not tenable; there was a wooded tongue of land on the British right, that overlooked, at half-cannon shot, all the upper as well as the lower part of the village both in flank and rear, yet was too distant from the position to be occupied by the allies: had Ney been at the head of the sixth corps, he would have quickly crowned this ridge, and then Fuentes could only have been maintained by submitting to a butchery.
On the 6th the enemy sent his wounded to the rear, making no demonstration of attack, and as the 7th passed in a like inaction, the British entrenchments were perfected. The 8th Massena withdrew his main body to the woods leading upon Espeja and Gallegos, but still maintained posts at Alameda and Fuentes. On the 10th, without being in any manner molested, he retired across the Agueda; the sixth and eight corps, and the cavalry, at Ciudad Rodrigo, the second corps by the bridge of Barba del Puerco. Bessieres also carried off the imperial guards, for Massena had been recalled to France, and Marmont assumed the command of the army of Portugal.
Both sides claimed the victory; the French, because they won the passage at Poço Velho, cleared the wood, turned our right flank, obliged the cavalry to retire, and forced lord Wellington to relinquish three miles of ground, and to change his front. The English, because the village of Fuentes so often attacked, was successfully defended, and because the principal object (the covering the blockade of Almeida) was attained.