ACTION
AT
SABUGAL
3RD APRIL 1811
On the morning of the 3rd a thick fog hung over the banks of the Coa. Beckwith’s Brigade of the Light Division was drawn up in close column behind the heights on the left bank of the river (in compliance with the disposition for the attack[99]), when a staff officer rode up and asked him ‘why he did not cross?’ Beckwith was not the man to whom such a question should have been addressed, nor one to hesitate in giving a practical answer to it. He immediately ordered his brigade to advance. Four companies (the right wing) of the 1st Battalion led. The banks were steep and the ford at which they crossed deep, the water nearly up to the men’s armpits. As soon as the Riflemen had climbed the opposite bank they advanced in skirmishing order. The officer in command of the French picquet ordered his men to fire as they retreated. Following the picquet, they soon came upon a regiment, and continued skirmishing till the rest of the brigade came up. Then they pushed the enemy through a chestnut-wood and up the hill; a blinding rain came on, and on advancing Beckwith found himself, when the shower ceased, confronted by the whole of Regnier’s Corps d’Armée. Their fire and overwhelming numbers forced back the four companies of the Battalion on the 43rd who were in support. Regnier followed with three strong columns; but the 43rd received them with such a fire that they fell back, and the 43rd charging them, drove them down the hill and into their position. Here the enemy made a stand, and being reinforced, again obliged Beckwith to retire. He got his Riflemen behind some walls, where he not only held and checked the enemy, but again drove the French back and pursued them; but on reaching their original position, Beckwith was attacked by infantry on the left, while cavalry on the right charged the skirmishers. A third time the handful of men were forced back by overwhelming numbers; but now the other brigade of the Light Division, attracted by the fire, came up; and the fog clearing off, the 3rd Division, under Picton, which had crossed the river lower down, came up on the enemy’s right; and the 5th Division, having crossed the bridge, appeared debouching from the town of Sabugal; thus reinforced, Beckwith drove the enemy at the point of the bayonet into and through his original position, and the French retreated in confusion. Unfortunately, Sir William Erskine with the cavalry had lost his way in the fog, and had gone too far to the right; so that advantage could not be taken of the loose manner in which the enemy left the field; yet some prisoners were made.
In this action, in which, as Lord Wellington states, ‘the operations of the day were, by unavoidable accidents, not performed in the manner he intended they should be,’ nothing could be more daring or more characteristic of British courage, than the way in which Beckwith, with a handful of men (the Riflemen, Elder’s Caçadores, and the 43rd), withstood and thrice repulsed and pursued a whole Corps d’Armée placed in a strong position. And deservedly does the great captain go on to say that he considered ‘the action fought by Colonel Beckwith’s brigade principally, to be one of the most glorious the British troops were ever engaged in.’[100]
Beckwith’s own coolness and gallant bearing in it are recorded by all the narrators of the action. When obliged by the overwhelming numbers and fury of the French to give the order to retire, he rode among his own Riflemen; and seeing some disposition to quicken the pace he would say: ‘Don’t run; I did not mean that; we will go steadily, and give them a shot as we retire.’ When he had reached his supports and could make a stand, he faced them about, and led them forward again, and was obeyed and followed as calmly and steadily as if he was marching them up and down the barrack square.
In this affair Lieutenant the Hon. Duncan Arbuthnot and 1 Rifleman were killed. Beckwith was wounded in the forehead, and had a horse shot under him; and Second Lieutenant William Haggup and 12 rank and file were wounded.
And of the company of the 2nd Battalion present in this action, 1 man was killed and 2 wounded.
During the fight, as the Riflemen were driving the enemy’s skirmishers through a chestnut-wood, a man of the 1st Battalion of the name of Flinn, was aiming at a Frenchman, when a hare started out of the fern with which the hill was covered. Flinn, leaving the Frenchman, covered the hare, and fired and killed his game. On the officer commanding the company remonstrating with him, his reply was, ‘Ah! your honour, sure we can kill a Frenchman any day; but it isn’t always I can bag a hare for your supper.’[101]
The fight was hardly over, when the fog dissolved in torrents of rain; and Lord Wellington, riding up at the moment, directed the Light Division, as an express recognition of its prowess during the day, to house themselves in the town of Sabugal. They arrived just in time to anticipate the 5th Division, who yielded the much-coveted shelter, not without much murmuring. Thus the Riflemen had a roof over their heads; but the houses were mostly shared with the former occupants, who were dying of hunger or of ill-usage.
On the next day the Light Division moved through Quadrazaes, Valdespina, and Alfayates, and halted for the night at the frontier village of Forcalhos.
On the 5th the Battalion marched to Albergueria (in Spain); Massena having crossed the Agueda, and evacuated Portugal, with the exception of a garrison in Almeida, which was immediately blockaded.