The Confrontation at Salamanca
Geoffrey Watson
Napoleon’s Spanish Ulcer
Book 7
Copyright © 2014 Geoffrey Watson
All Rights Reserved.
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
PROLOGUE
In the spring of 1812, Napoleon really had only himself to blame for the deteriorating situation in Spain. For years he had threatened and bullied his neighbours into fighting for him at sea against England. Then he had forced them into joining him in an invasion of Portugal, because the Portuguese refused to join his continental system and stop trading with England.
Eventually, that had all ended in tears and he had become frustrated with his increasingly unhelpful ally. He forced the king to abdicate in favour of his son and then lured the son into France, where he made him abdicate also. Spain was to be governed as part of the French Empire. Napoleon’s brother Joseph would be moved from Naples to be the new king of Spain: El Rey Intruso.
It seemed the perfect solution. Napoleonic government would replace the ancient feudal system in Spain and the people would be grateful. He could invade Portugal again and the whole of Western Europe would be part of France, with all the thrones occupied by members of his own imperial family.
The startling discovery that the people were not grateful was almost beyond his understanding, but it went farther than that. They were so ungrateful that they rose in anger, wherever garrisons of the ‘friendly’ French army were stationed and forced them to retreat.
Effectively, it was the true start of the Peninsular War and the beginning of the drain on French resources that would see up to half a million of her soldiers tied up in Spain over the next five years.
Left to themselves, the Spaniards would have been subjugated completely by the invaders within two years. Their armies lost almost every battle they fought by themselves against the French. The guerrilla, or little war, could only ever be a harassment of French garrisons and an impediment to travel and communications.
Napoleon poured troops into Spain. He came himself at the beginning and did his best to destroy the small British army commanded by Sir John Moore.
Once he knew that the British had escaped his trap, he left Marshal Soult to chase them all the way to Corunna and returned to France after installing his brother Joseph as king. That was the last time that he went to Spain himself.
Thereafter, he attempted to order affairs personally from Paris, or wherever he happened to be. His commanders; the king, marshals or mere generals; were each in command of an army, initially for conquest, but rapidly becoming bogged down in garrison duties.
At any one time, it is thought that over half the French troops available were on garrison duties, attempting to keep the peace and control the depredations of the guerrilleros and those armed bandits who merely made use of the patriotic title for their own criminal purposes.
Lord Wellington was in command of effectively the only army that England could put into the field. In the beginning, when added to the British-trained Portuguese troops, his numbers were still fewer than any one of the five French armies, scattered throughout the Peninsular.
His only option was to try and fight his opponents, one army at a time and to fight them from a defensive position that gave him some advantage to set against their overwhelming strength and battle-hardened, veteran soldiers.
That he was successful each time, brought grudging French respect for his soldiers, but convinced their commanders that he was only a defensive, sepoy general. They dreamed of face-to-face encounters in the open field, where French elan and esprit would sweep the English away.
There was now a very real prospect that they would get their first wish, although the overall situation had changed out of all recognition.
Wellington’s successes had brought him thousands of reinforcements from home to swell his army. At the same time Napoleon had withdrawn thousands of soldiers for the war he intended to fight with Russia; ironically for the same reason that he had first invaded Portugal: the Tsar would not stop trading with England.
Wellington chose his intended victim with care. For the last year, the Army of Portugal had been the only French army that was not responsible for garrison duties or involved in further conquest.
Now, its commander, Marshal Marmont, had been made responsible for all the territory between the two great westward-flowing rivers, the Duero and the Tagus, as far eastward as the capital, Madrid, where King Joseph sat with a small royal army; his personal guard.
Marmont’s army, like most of the others, had suffered losses due to Napoleon’s desperate need for soldiers and was now thought to be less than Wellington’s and scattered in garrison over the whole of his region.
It meant that there was a very real possibility of doing considerable damage to the Army of Portugal, if the commanders in other regions could be caused so much trouble that none of their divisions could be spared to reinforce Marmont’s force.
All of the various allied forces that could be brought into action were called upon by the British commander-in-chief. The remnants of the Spanish regular armies were urged into harrying actions in the south, the east and the north and were to be encouraged and assisted by the Royal Navy, raiding ports and coastal towns and landing British and Spanish marines wherever they could cause the most trouble.
The Partidas; bands of fighters in the guerrilla or little war, were urged into action throughout the country. Some of the more active and charismatic leaders now controlled bands of infantry and cavalry of brigade strength or more and had been given the rank of general by the Cortez in Cadiz.
Co-operating with the other raiding forces, they were to set the regions ablaze and keep the French garrisons so busy fighting the fires that Marmont would receive no help from any of his fellow commanders, even should they wish to do so.
Given the degree of self-interest and greed among Napoleon’s marshals and generals, it was usual that only a direct order from the emperor himself could prize away forces from one region to another.
It was into this volatile mixture of naval, regular and irregular forces that Wellington intended to add a special force that he had been encouraging and protecting since he had met them at his first battle in Spain, at Talavera.
Joshua Welbeloved, their commander, had been leading a small special naval unit; armed with accurate, quick-firing Ferguson rifles, since the days of Napoleon’s siege of Acre in 1799.
By the time of Talavera, he was a post captain in the Royal Navy and had trained two platoons of marines that had held up an entire division of French infantry for a few vital minutes in that battle. It had enabled Sir Arthur Wellesley to plug a vital gap in his defensive line.
From that moment, Lord Wellington, as he had become, had adopted the Hornets, or Avispónes Morenos as the Spanish had christened them. Still nominally controlled by the Admiralty, they grew into a Naval Battalion, then a Naval Brigade, having recruited a battalion of Hanoverians from Napoleon’s étrangeurs.
Now they were the Naval Division of over two and a half thousand men in four battalio
ns; the original British Hornets, the German Hornissen, the Portuguese Vespãos and the most recent Spanish Avispónes.
Their uniforms were all a dirty tan colour, developed from the canvas tunics run up by the sailmaker for Welbeloved’s first forays into Turkish Palestine and Syria. He preferred them that way, having seen too many redcoats killed by American rebel riflemen, while his father was acting as scout for Captain Harry Ferguson during the war of independence.
Every man, no matter what his nationality, had been selected for special training, based on Welbeloved’s original scouting experience in America. They were the cream of those who had volunteered and in training, the rate of rejection was high. If they were chosen, they were the best: complete warriors who rode into action, but generally fought on foot, like dragoons in the armies of yesteryear.
On foot was a euphemism for unmounted. All their flintlocks were breech loading and their preferred position was flat on their bellies within a killing range of two hundred and fifty yards for the converted, smoothbore carbines and four hundred yards for the converted Baker rifles and the few original Fergusons.
Putting this into perspective, one has to consider that the standard musket used by any army was highly inaccurate at a range of more than twenty-five yards. That was why battles were fought by massed ranks of soldiers shooting at other massed ranks only twenty or thirty yards away. They relied on the shotgun effect. Some of the balls; though surprisingly few; were bound to find a target.
Four battalions of Hornets from four different nationalities were now setting out to help Lord Wellington seek his first major offensive battle in Spain. It was the supreme challenge. It was a battle he must win or avoid altogether. Losing was not an option. Neither Britain nor Portugal could field another army. France would become the master of the Peninsular if she could annihilate this single allied army.
CHAPTER 1
If one were a younger son of a wealthy aristocratic family, with two older brothers who were not only depressingly clever, but also as fit as fleas, one could kiss goodbye to any thoughts of inheriting the family estate and settling down to produce heirs to the title and maybe taking a seat in the House of Lords in the fullness of time.
His father already had an heir and a spare and that left Algernon (Algy to his friends) Cholmondeley (Chumley to everyone else) having to make his own way in a world that offered few acceptable options to younger sons of the nobility.
He did not consider himself to be brainy, but he had an enquiring mind and was irredeemably reluctant to accept established doctrine of any sort that he was unable to verify to his own satisfaction. That disqualified him from the Church. He did not want to challenge the faith, but could not imagine himself preaching it to others.
The second son was already a Member of Parliament and as they disagreed about almost everything, Algy decided that politics was best left to others.
Trade was not acceptable to members of the aristocracy, although he had heard that fortunes were to be made in India and elsewhere. Also, certain noble lords were not averse to making money by allowing entrepreneurs and merchants to set up manufactories that exploited the natural resources of their vast estates. Not really a suitable occupation for a gentleman. Anyway, he had no estate.
His ancestors had become aristocrats by being warriors and he would follow their example by becoming a warrior himself: a gentleman warrior of course.
No doubt the Royal Navy was an excellent career, but were they really true gentlemen when their officers were chosen from those who had been to sea from the age of twelve, or even earlier?
That only left the army and he gave a great deal of thought to what sort of soldier he wanted to be. Naturally, a gentleman would wish to join a cavalry regiment. They were exciting, romantic and had the most gorgeous uniforms and the most acceptable social life. All well and good, but in all the books that he had been able to read, about the Greek hoplites, the Roman legions, the mediaeval battles like Crécy and Agincourt, Cromwell’s roundheads and Marlborough’s cumbersome victories, it was never the cavalry that secured the victory. Almost always it was the foot soldiers.
From the little that was available, he was aware that hordes of mounted men at various times had erupted out of Asia and destroyed empires, but weapons were primitive in those days. He could not now imagine a loose horde of pony soldiers being successful in overcoming any formed infantry equipped with gunpowder weapons fitted with bayonets.
Therefore, he prevailed upon his father to purchase a commission for him as a lieutenant in one of the senior regiments of the line. His duties were in no way onerous, although at first he was unable to comprehend how the soldiers that he was helping to command were able to tolerate the mind-numbing routines of drill; both of the parade ground and musket variety.
His young fellow officers hardly even noticed and the senior sergeants, to a man, gave him to understand, with exaggerated respect and politeness, that they and the colonel ran the regiment and that he was there to look decorative and to uphold the honour of the regiment among the local ‘Quality’.
He did not interfere, but they soon began to realise that not only was he as expert as they were in all the commands and manoeuvres, but that he actually understood why each drill was necessary when translocated onto a battlefield.
Eighteen months of such routine had made him quietly indispensable, when everything changed. His regiment was put on notice for service overseas, possibly the disease-ridden West Indies and his family became alarmed. They regarded an army career as a respectable way of keeping a younger son occupied, but not of sacrificing him to any of the plagues, diseases and epidemics in the graveyard of Europeans.
They spoke to friends and used what influence they had to great effect. Algy found himself on the Staff of Sir Arthur Wellesley, who was on his way to take command of British and Portuguese troops in Lisbon, with orders to drive the French out of Portugal.
Lieutenant Cholmondeley considered rebellion, but reflected that his regiment was only destined for garrison duties, while a general with a reputation for winning battles in India and more recently in Denmark, would help him learn more about the business of fighting. That was the purpose of being a warrior in the first place.
He was sadly disillusioned. Sir Arthur was kind and considerate and he really did want aristocratic officers on his staff, who worked hard and did as they were told. Exactly as they were told, down to the merest comma of their orders.
When Wellesley doubted the ability of his senior commanders to act as he required on their own initiative, he was almost paranoid about his staff officers and their undeviating attention to the instructions that he gave them.
Very early on in his army career, Algy learned that when senior officers gave an order, they expected it to be obeyed immediately and without question. It was the system and he had no quarrel with it. He also understood that many of them were too lazy to give complete orders and that he would be in trouble if things went wrong following his own interpretation of what they had omitted. In the army, that was acceptable and one learned by experience to know what was expected and take responsibility for it.
There was no danger of that with Sir Arthur. His hand-written floods of orders were concise and normally quite complete. His aides might well have been intelligent carrier pigeons for all the responsibility they were allowed.
To make matters worse, at the age of twenty Algy struggled to appear more than fourteen. His hulking, ex-prizefighter servant kept his uniforms in spotless, pristine perfection and he wore them with an unconscious grace, raising thoughts of a very superior pageboy at the royal court.
Naturally, some of the other aides sought to take advantage at first. They got very little reaction, except for one burly young man of Algy’s age and rank. He was large, strong and as lazy as he could manage to be without attracting the attention of his superiors.
He used a loud voice and a large presence to intimidate anyone of lower rank or smaller stature until Algy sto
od up to him and offered to do whatever he wished, if only the fellow could beat him in a fist fight.
Gentlemen, it should be said, did not fight with their fists, but prize fighting was very popular in the country and Algy made sure that he had a large audience when he made the challenge. The man could not back down when he had such a weight and height advantage.
All the young officers were game for any kind of sporting challenge and were just as happy as any Roman plebeian to see a big gladiator destroy a smaller one.
The fight lasted less than three minutes. The big gladiator was brave and did not surrender. Algy walked away when his opponent could no longer see him through eyes swollen shut. He himself was quite unmarked. No one attempted to intimidate him ever again.
His first meeting with the Hornets had not been propitious, when he had been sent to summon Welbeloved to a meeting with Sir Arthur before the battle commenced at Talavera. He still remembered with horror how unusually disdainful he had been of the drably dressed irregulars as they appeared at the time. Nevertheless, he had shown sufficient character to be offered at a later date, the chance to be selected as a platoon commander, when the newly ennobled Lord Wellington encouraged the Hornets to expand.
Now he was a true warrior in a way that few soldiers in Lord Wellington’s conventional army could comprehend. He was now promoted brevet major, the senior commander of the British First Battalion of the Naval Division – the Hornets. He was accepted on equal terms by senior officers who had once looked upon him as a boy messenger, only three years ago.
Unfortunately, in spite of all his efforts to cultivate a moustache in order to make himself look older and wiser, he still had the smooth cheeks and fresh complexion of a choirboy. Dammit, he looked younger than the Portuguese Captain Pom, who to his certain knowledge was not yet sixteen.
He had always been good with firearms, from the time when he had shot game birds on the family estate, to the practice that made him deadly with the matched pair of rifled pistols before he became a Hornet. Possibly Dai Evans was still better than he was with his rifle, but Dai was inclined to regard pistols as officers’ toys. He would wager that he was a better marksman than Dai, taking both weapons together.
The Confrontation at Salamanca Page 1