The War of Wars (105 page)

The Forty-Second, as the strongest regiment in the division, was selected for the purpose, supported by the light companies of the Highland brigade and General Pack’s Portuguese brigade. At eight o’clock they advanced . . . but the Portuguese, who thought to raise their spirits by it, began to shout . . . and thereby drew the enemy’s fire upon them. The Forty-Second advanced gallantly and planted their ladders which proved to be too short, and after persisting for some time they were beat back. They returned again, and with Major Cocks and his light . . . companies got in . . . scrambling over without ladders.

Then they attacked the main defences:

During the whole of this time [the French] kept up a constant fire from the top of the wall and threw down bags of gunpowder and large stones. At last, having been twenty-five minutes in the ditch and not seeing anything of the other parties, [our men] retired, having lost half their numbers in killed and wounded . . . Thus ended the attack, which was almost madness to attempt.

The British attempted to mine the walls, with mixed results, although a breach of sorts was made at last. Meanwhile the French staged repeated sorties from the fortress, which took dozens of lives. A further attempt to storm the walls was made on 18 October:

Our party was to escalade the wall in front. Burgess ran forward with thirty men, [and] Walpole and myself followed with fifty each . . . A most tremendous fire opened upon us from every part which took us in front and rear. They poured down fresh men, and ours kept falling down into the ditch, dragging and knocking down others. We were so close that they fairly put their muskets into our faces, and we pulled one of their men through an embrasure. Burgess was killed and Walpole severely wounded. We had hardly any men left on the top, and at last we gave way. How we got over the palisades I know not . . . the fire was tremendous: shot, shell, grape, musketry, large stones, hand grenades and every missile weapon were used against us.

In the attack Wellington’s closest military protégé, Major Edward Somers Cocks, was killed. Wellington was rendered speechless by the news and was bent over with grief at his burial. Some 2,000 British soldiers had been lost to 600 Frenchmen.

Wellington had placed himself in serious danger. In the north the French general Clausel had been reinforced by the French army in the Basque region to some 80,000 in total, compared to Wellington’s 25,000; the rest of his army had remained behind in Madrid. To the
south, Joseph and Soult had joined up and were moving on Madrid with 60,000 men. Wellington believed that the autumn rains he was experiencing in Burgos would prevent such an advance: but near Madrid the rains had been light.

The downpour in the north had rendered the roads there virtually impassable. If he stayed where he was he risked being crushed by his far more numerous opponents, trapped by the rains and mud, his garrison in Madrid overwhelmed and annihilated by the approaching pincers of two colossal French armies.

He had blundered into a trap. His decision to divide his army as a superior force approached and threatened his lines of communication had been utterly out of character for this meticulous military planner. It can only be explained by his misplaced confidence that the French were virtually beaten in Spain after Salamanca – and the need to go on notching up victories, not to be seen in England to falter. In this, his behaviour was uncharacteristically similar to that of Napoleon.

He was ready to accept responsibility: ‘I see that a disposition already exists to blame the government for the failure of the siege. The government had nothing to say in the siege. It was entirely my own act.’ One of his officers was less kind: ‘I have not been in the habit much of questioning the conduct of our chief, even when it differed from what I expected, but . . . it appears in this instance to be extremely impolitic, not to say most wantonly reprehensible.’

After three days’ further futile siege he ordered his angry men to retreat to save his endangered army. Even so, Wellington would have been overwhelmed by the advancing French forces but for the reconquest of the Basque capital of Bilbao by a Spanish force, which compelled the French to pause and detach part of their army to the city. The Spaniards Wellington so often railed against had saved him.

Wellington ordered his army in Madrid similarly to save itself and abandon the city. They blew up the powder depots and the fortifications of the capital as they withdrew. A British officer recalled: ‘I never recollect on any occasion . . . being more melancholy and depressed than in passing by the Puente de Toledo, and giving up Madrid to the plunder and wanton cruelty of the enemy. I would willingly have lost a limb in battle to have saved it, and I know every man felt the same
sentiments.’ Napoleon was to undergo a similar experience in Moscow soon afterwards: the allure of capital cities was often deceptive.

Hill led the army out of Madrid and they marched at some speed to catch up with Wellington’s army before reaching Salamanca, in mid-November. The retreat was marked by atrocities comparable to those of the French, carried out by sullen and disappointed men. One officer remarked that ‘many peasants lay dead by the roadside, murdered. The old trade was going on, killing and slaughtering while capturing our daily bread.’

They consoled themselves with the abundant wines of the region. An officer observed: ‘I remember seeing a soldier fully accoutred with his knapsack on in a large tank; he had either fell in or been pushed in by his comrades, there he lay dead. I saw a dragoon fire his pistol into a large vat containing several thousands of gallons, in a few minutes we were up to our knees in wine fighting like tigers for it.’

Reaching Salamanca again a witness remarked that Wellington reviewed his troops in clothes ‘unaccompanied by any mark of distinction or splendour. His long brown cloak concealed his undergarments; his cocked hat, soaked and disfigured under the rain.’ Another commented that ‘he looked extremely ill’. He was also bad-tempered and issued a general censure of his men for their looting and ill-behaviour which caused resentment.

The largest French army was approaching Salamanca from the south, and Wellington had no option but to resume the retreat knee-deep in mud to the safety of Ciudad Rodrigo. Corpses and dead horses lined the route as disease took its toll. The nightmare of eating beef was captured by one officer:

Each man received his portion of the quivering flesh, but, before any fires could be relighted, the order for march arrived, and the . . . soldiers were obliged either to throw away the meat or put it with their biscuit into their haversacks . . . In a short time the wet meat completely destroyed the bread, which became perfect paste, and the blood which oozed from the undressed beef . . . gave so bad a taste to the bread that many could not eat it. Those who did were in general attacked with violent pains in their bowels, and the want of salt brought on dysentery.

By the time they reached Ciudad Rodrigo, after the French had given up the chase, some 6,000 had been lost.

Wellington was back at last on the Portuguese border, his old fastness. Now at least his men could rest. They were desperately disappointed. Two large British armies had previously penetrated deep into Spain – the army of Sir John Moore and Wellington’s own at Talavera – and twice they had been driven out. This seemed a third re-run. It had been demonstrated yet again that the French could not advance into Portugal without endangering themselves, and that the British could not do so into Spain and hold their ground. It appeared to be stalemate.

In fact, the British had made significant progress. The French had been driven from Andalucia, Extremadura and Asturias and the British remained in possession of the frontier fortresses at Almeida, Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajoz. Wellington assuaged his wounded vanity by riding down to liberated Cadiz, where the provisional Spanish government was sitting. There the provisional government had given him titular control of all Spanish forces, as well as British ones. But to his fury he discovered that in practice this amounted to little: the Spanish generals simply ignored his directives, Spanish armies remained as disorganized as before and some commanders were deeply offended by the decree. One, General Ballesteros, came out in open revolt against the British ‘oppressors’.

Back at his headquarters on the northern frontier at Freneida, he indulged in the long idle months of winter and spring in more agreeable pursuits than quarrelling with the Spaniards. Captain Thomas Browne, a British officer observed: ‘He had at headquarters a pack of hounds from England and hunted two or three times a week with such officers of headquarters as chose to join in the chase. There were not many, as few could afford to have English horses, and our Spanish and Portuguese steeds were not equal to the work. There was no want of foxes, but it was a difficult and rocky country to ride over. He went out shooting every now and then, but did not appear fond of it, as he was a very indifferent shot.’

He wrote to General Stuart: ‘The hunting season is coming on apace. The hounds are on the road, and I shall want Waters for the
earth-stopping business, if not for that of Adjutant-General. He has been very near dying, poor fellow, and what is worse, I hear he has lost all his dogs.’ He was accustomed to rising at six and doing paperwork for three hours before breakfast. Then he would hold meetings with his officers until three in the afternoon. After a light meal he would go riding for three hours.

He was curt and brusque in the morning, but extremely good company in the evening. The subaltern George Gleig (later Wellington’s biographer) wrote that in company he was ‘most interesting and lively. The Duke himself spoke out on all subjects with an absence of reserve which sometimes surprised his guests . . . He was rich in anecdote, most of them taking a ludicrous turn, and without any apparent effort he put the company very much at their ease . . .’

He was fastidious in appearance, wearing his celebrated ‘Wellington boots’ frequently; Francis Larpent, Wellington’s advocate general, observed: ‘like every great man, present or past, almost without exception, he is vain . . . He is remarkably neat and most particular in his dress . . . He cuts the skirts of his coat shorter to make them look smarter: only a short time since, going to him on business, I found him discussing the cut of his half-boots and suggesting alterations to his servant.’

During that long period of rest and recreation, Wellington became increasingly convinced that 1813 would be the decisive year of the war. He had at last recovered his old bounce and self-confidence after the awful setbacks of the previous autumn.

It was not until 22 May, however, that he at last recrossed the frontier with his rested and reinforced army. The men were told not to bring their great coats. It was the equivalent of Wellington burning his boats: he did not believe they would have to return in winter. As they crossed the border, Wellington stagily took off his hat and shouted: ‘Farewell, Portugal. I shall never see you again.’ He had already remarked that there was ‘scarcely any French army left, except that in our front’.

His own army now consisted of 80,000 men, including the Portuguese, and 20,000 Spaniards. The French in Spain meanwhile had been depleted of 20,000 of their best troops to reinforce Napoleon’s beleaguered northern armies: worse still, Napoleon had ordered Wellington’s old adversary, the Army of Portugal, to hold down the mounting insurgencies in the Basque country, Navarra and Aragón. General Clausel, the new northern commander, was a fine and energetic soldier, but even he proved unable to control the rebellions in the north.

Wellington’s offensive had been brilliantly and meticulously planned through the winter and spring, in contrast to the improvised and disastrous one of the previous autumn. He would use as a forward base the Spanish port of Santander in the north, controlled by the Spaniards, where he assembled voluminous supplies and a siege train. He would no longer need to depend on the long supply line to Lisbon. Santander would also provide a point of evacuation if necessary. His army moved forward in two giant columns, one under Hill heading for Salamanca,
the other much larger under Wellington himself and Sir Thomas Graham.

The second crossed the river Douro with great skill, Wellington himself supervising the operation from a basket slung over the cliffs, and then marched on to Valladolid. Joseph and Marshal Jourdan had had to evacuate the city, as well as Madrid. The two British columns joined up at Toro and, instead of attacking the French stronghold at Burgos, bypassed it and did what they should have done the previous year – moving into the sparsely populated hills to the north, threatening to surround Burgos and cut off the forces there from possible retreat to France. The French abandoned the fortress without a fight and retreated further across the Ebro to Vitoria.

There at last Joseph decided to make a stand. The town was approached from the west by a valley bounded on one side by the Zaderra river and on the other by virtually impassable mountains, although the French feared that an attack might be mounted from the north as well. On 21 June there was skirmishing from the south-east, to which the French immediately rushed troops, imagining this to be the main thrust of the British attack. In fact the bulk of the British forces were concentrated to the south-west, on the other side of the river valley, under the nominal command of Lord Dalhousie but under the actual command of Sir Thomas Picton and behind him Wellington.

From the north there appeared out of the supposedly impassable mountains another body of troops under Graham. Wellington’s artillery pounded away. The French fought bravely under this three-pronged attack, battling continuously as all three advanced. Harvey, Wellington’s aide, had two horses shot under him in the thick of the fighting. If the northern force had advanced with speed, the French would have been completely trapped: instead they hesitated and the French troops, in full retreat, were able to make their escape across the Pass of Salvatierra, leaving most of King Joseph’s baggage train in its wake. This was promptly plundered by the British troops, who swarmed into Vitoria in an undisciplined mass.