The Confrontation at Salamanca

by Geoffrey Watson

  Both of these are adequate enough reasons for all of us and I flatter myself in believing that you enjoy this as much as I.”

  He continued remorselessly, ignoring the murmurs of agreement. “I find it a matter of some concern that I am coming to rely upon the services that only your division has been providing with any degree of reliability.

  I use information from paid agents and guerrilleros. Also anything that comes in from the Cortez and Regency Council in Cadiz. Nothing carries half the weight of the information I get from you, even when half your division is away in the north and your battalions here are enjoying a well-deserved period of relaxation.”

  If he noticed a small amount of embarrassed squirming at that point, he made no comment. He was concentrating on giving them the best appreciation of his intentions that he could.

  “You are all aware that Sir Joshua and Colonel MacKay are helping the Spanish 6th Army and the Royal Navy in occupying all the attention of the French Army of the North in the Asturias and Cantabrica. General Caffarelli is just taking over from General Dorsenne and our intention is that he should not be able to spare any of his divisions to aid Marmont when we advance on Salamanca.

  I mention briefly, that we also attempt to occupy the attention of Soult in Andalucia and Suchet in Valencia. I dallied briefly, deciding whether or not to use your battalions to help in this, but Sir Joshua and I agreed that both marshals were too much under strength to be able to assist Marmont, if diversions could be created by Rowland Hill in the south and an expeditionary force from Sicily in Valencia.

  The Spaniards have been told to go on the offensive in these areas. I do not expect great things, but merely expect our divisions in support to keep both French armies fully committed and unable to provide succour to Marmont.

  The only other source of reinforcements is Joseph Bonaparte in Madrid. He is said to have about ten thousand men as a royal guard and strategic reserve. With attacks being reported from all points of the compass, he shall not know which marshal needs help most and I do not expect any decisive action from him.”

  He stopped speaking and looked around the table. Captain Pom already knew all about the planned diversions, having helped with the translation of many of the despatches. He was the only one to be looking back at him with an expression that could best be described as curiosity.

  The other five were looking anywhere but at him, while they appeared diligently to absorb what he had told them. He looked thoughtful himself, but continued. “Within the next two weeks, it is my intention to advance toward Salamanca in order to attempt to bring Marmont to a general engagement.

  I know that the Army of Portugal is scattered over much of Castille and León, but that if Marmont can concentrate all his divisions, he can match my numbers. There can be no doubt but that he shall attempt to avoid battle until he can attain parity or better. The longer he takes to achieve parity, the longer I have to select my positions from which I am confident I cannot be beaten.

  That is, as always, the prime consideration. Sir Joshua is one of the few commanders that thoroughly understands that fact. The French in Spain have many times our numbers and if we are beaten but the once, we are finished. I shall not fight if I am ever at a disadvantage.

  I make no conditions upon what you can do, but if Marmont can be kept unaware of your reconnaissance until our army starts its advance, that shall make it even more valuable. I assume that you shall feed all your intelligence through Pom, as you have been doing for the past three weeks?”

  There was a profound silence, until Vere drew a deep breath and laughed aloud. “Before he left, Sir Joshua told me that you would know within days that we were not just resting and training, My Lord.”

  Wellington smiled thinly. “Before he left, Lord George, Welbeloved told me that if I wanted the Hornets to remain idle and relax for a month, I must order them to do so in words that were most specific and incapable of any other interpretation. Please do not ask me to apologise for neglecting to do so when the information that your missing companies have been supplying tells me nearly everything that has been happening in Salamanca up until yesterday.

  The very clandestine nature of the affair must have given a certain additional spice to it and at the same time ensured that, if I knew nothing of it, the French could in no way be allowed to. You were all aware that I did not wish them to be alarmed by unusual activity until we had started our move.”

  Vere grinned and shrugged, with his hands held out in mock supplication. “In that case, My Lord, we must be grateful for your forbearance and try to prove that it has been justified in ways other than the provision of intelligence.”

  He left the table and returned with half a dozen rolls of stiff paper about two feet long. “You may doubtless recall, My Lord, that we escorted one of your staff, some short time ago, while he prepared charts for you?

  It was all very interesting and not as difficult as it seemed at the time, particularly to those of our men who had naval experience. We made it part of our officers’ training.

  We had to assume that any engagement would take place around Salamanca, more likely in the north between the Tormes and the Duero rivers, but possibly south in the bend of the Tormes. These charts cover an area fifteen miles west of Salamanca to thirty miles east and fifteen miles south to the Duero in the north.

  I have not the temerity to tell you where you must fight, My Lord, but if you can arrange for it to be within this area, there shall be no excuse for your generals not knowing the military topography in which they shall fight.”

  Lord Wellington shook his head slowly from side to side as he examined the maps. “I really did think I was beginning to draw level with you in recognising the talents that you have among you. These are really most excellent maps; so detailed in all the things that are important to us. The scale is, I see, about one inch to each mile and the delineation of hills, ridges and valleys is such as I have often prayed for when looking for an advantage against the enemy.

  I shall have these copied and give a set to each of my divisional commanders: I may well send one of my aides with each set in case they require instruction in how to read them.”

  He noted Captain Pom’s reaction to this news. “That does not apply to you, young Pom. You are temporarily released from close attendance. I need you to ride with Lord George and make yourself personally responsible for the continued flow of intelligence back to me.”

  Seeing the gleam of pure pleasure on the lad’s face at the prospect, he smiled and added. “Don’t raise your hopes too high, Pom. I know you itch to be back with the Hornets, but they can manage without you and I cannot. I shall have need of you again as soon as we challenge Marmont. Until then, the rest of my aides must cope with all the tasks that they have been heaping onto you. It may come as a shock to them when they realise the sheer volume of work that you have appropriated.”

  He turned to the rest of them. “I shall wish you good fortune, Gentlemen. I do not have to, as you make your own fortune. I shall appreciate it however, shall you remain unseen to the enemy until they know we are advancing. By all means make life uncomfortable for them after that, but do not stop the information coming in.”

  The dismissal was quite abrupt, but they knew that he had given them more of his time than was his custom. He now had several hours more to devote to orders, correspondence and planning before he retired for the night. He had no option. There simply was no one else capable of dealing with all the minutiae of running the army he had created.

  * * *

  The reconnaissance companies of the Portuguese Vespãos to the north of Salamanca and of the German Hornissen to the south were expecting to be relieved by their replacements and to return to relax for another few weeks near to Ciudad Rodrigo.

  They were indeed relieved, but their relaxation was only to be in the area immediately west of the city, where it was far less important to be invisible as the French already knew that any reconnaissance party was always lik
ely to be challenged in this area between the two armies.

  The other companies making up the two battalions flowed unseen around the city until it was completely surrounded. Each company worked independently and very discretely, doing their best not to alert the French to the thousand enemy troops; the Hornets; that were now hidden all about them. Vere, Roffhack, Gonçalves and Pom established a secure base to the west, to which a constant flow of information came in to be studied and sent on to Lord Wellington.

  The work was quite tedious and in many ways frustrating for all the companies except those in the west. The French did not forage much to the west of Salamanca unless it was done as part of their scouting activities. The few encounters with the Hornets had taught them that reconnaissance in strength by cavalry was the only answer. It wasn’t a safe answer, but was better than having to play nursemaid to parties of infantry searching for extra food and fodder.

  In the north, south and east, the watching Hornets had to be just that, watching. Most French units were safe to go about their business until Lord Wellington started his advance and were blithely unaware that their forays were studied and reported upon.

  The only excitement permitted the Hornets was the occasional tempting courier who just might be carrying important despatches. On these occasions it was deemed important to have a few of the local guerrilleros seen at the ambush site, so that they could be held responsible by any of the escort troops who escaped.

  Now that many of the guerrilla bands were becoming larger and better organised; increasingly they were being attached to regular army units as self contained bands and were no longer as thick here on the ground as they once were.

  If anything, the Hornets themselves were so soberly dressed that they were likely to be mistaken for guerrilleros, who would normally be expected to provide their own clothes, perhaps looted from the enemy, but certainly giving a more military impression than was actually justified.

  They took very few couriers in this period, but enough to maintain the flow of information. Wellington was able to learn that Salamanca contained three, or at the most four divisions and the Marmont must be anticipating some aggressive move as he was fortifying two or three substantial convent buildings close to the main bridge over the River Tormes.

  Even Lord George Vere’s respect for the French intelligence gathering went up considerably at the beginning of Wellington’s advance. He had thought that they would be unaware of the approaching army until it was within sight of the city, at which time they may be forced to make an attempt to defend the bridge and line of the River Tormes.

  Thinking about it later, he could only imagine that it was the sudden cessation of Spanish commercial activity that gave Marmont prior warning. This movement of Spanish traders had, of course, ceased when the army started to move from Ciudad Rodrigo and this was the time, precisely, when the French reacted by sending a large squadron of chasseurs to find out why.

  The Hornets had to decide whether to let them discover the advancing army and ambush them on the way back, or to attack them before they had the chance to confirm what they were very likely expecting.

  As Wellington’s advance guard would be in sight of Salamanca by the following day, Vere decided that there was nothing to be gained by delaying matters any longer. He set up an ambush at one of the places where his men had been ambushing the French at frequent intervals over the last two years.

  One would have thought that, through sheer familiarity, the chasseurs would have been warier. Certainly, if this unit had been stationed in Salamanca for more than a few months, they would have known how dangerous this region could be.

  Perhaps most of them were new recruits? If so, they lost their innocence quite abruptly and very few returned to warn Marmont that something unpleasant was happening.

  As a consequence, the French were again able to demonstrate what a superb military machine they had created. Within hours of the return of the shattered chasseur squadron, the garrison of Salamanca was on the move northwards. Marmont evidently did not regard Salamanca as a place that was capable of defence against vastly greater numbers. He would retire northwards toward the River Duero and refuse battle until he could collect and concentrate his scattered divisions from their garrisons all across León.

  He left behind only a few hundred men holding three remarkably strong forts that had been built by reinforcing convents overlooking the main bridge over the River Tormes. Parts of the ancient university had been demolished and the recovered stone used to strengthen the outer walls.

  There was no way that they could withstand a full-scale siege. That was not the intention. If they could hold out for a week or more, they would distract Wellington from an enthusiastic pursuit of Marmont and buy time for the French to bring their forces together for a full-scale battle.

  CHAPTER 8

  The final unresolved part of the puzzle had become clear to Welbeloved in the last week. It concerned the two missing French divisions that rumour; never more than a rumour; had insinuated were transferred back and forth between the Army of the North and the Army of Portugal at the time when Marmont had been given responsibility for all the territory south of the Cantabrian Mountains.

  First reports had suggested that one of the divisions was covering territory in the Asturias and that the other was the one likely to be facing General Santocildes when he advanced west.

  Prisoners gathered in from foraging parties and captured at La Bañeza confirmed that one division had already effectively vanished into garrison duties at Zamora, Toro, Benavente, La Bañeza and Astorga.

  Zamora and Toro on the River Duero were under siege by one of Wellington’s Portuguese brigades. La Bañeza had surrendered to Addenbrooke and Sotomayor and Astorga and Benavente were being invested at the present by Santocildes’s Spaniards.

  As he had no heavy guns to break down the walls, the best he could do was sit around the two towns and stop the French going anywhere.

  It wasn’t what Wellington was hoping for, but it did prevent five thousand troops from joining up with Marmont.

  As Welbeloved now knew, Santocildes was a pragmatist. He was painfully aware of the limitations of the conscript army that he had brought from Galicia. There were fifteen to twenty thousand of them and he suspected that he could trust only fifteen hundred of his cavalry and maybe three thousand of his light infantry to give a good account of themselves against a French army.

  That was only because the Hornets had taken the trouble to instruct a nucleus of his horsemen and light infantry in their way of fighting. It had taken nearly a year for the benefits of that training to be passed on to what was now considered an elite part of his force.

  The brutal truth was that he was besieging probably four thousand infantry in the two towns and he was doing it with only three thousand effective infantry of his own.

  He dreaded the thought that the besieged might all come out looking for a fight at the same time as the division of General Bonnet, that Welbeloved had told him about, came into view.

  Welbeloved had only now heard about Bonnet. A wagon train had just arrived from their new base at Ribadeo and with it a report from MacKay that the Asturias had been cleared of French. The division led by General Bonnet had been transferred once more to the Army of Portugal and was known to have moved south, out of the mountains at about the same time that Welbeloved had joined Santocildes.

  Somewhere to the north of Astorga and León and south of the Cantabrian Mountains were five thousand French troops, that in theory could appear at any time and quite spoil General Santocildes’s day.

  Alternatively, if General Bonnet was moderately cautious and knew about the Army of Galicia, but not about its frailties, he would not fancy matching his division against three times his own numbers. He would be waiting for orders from Marmont and by now the marshal would surely be aware that Wellington was on the move and would be doing his best to call in all the soldiers he could find, to concentrate his own army.

&nb
sp; This was just the contingency that Wellington had foreseen when he had asked Santocildes to advance. He was hoping that both French divisions could be neutralised and that Marmont would be forced to take action to protect his western flank.

  There was no hope of that now and it was up to Welbeloved to try and locate Bonnet’s division. The first priority was to convince the general that Santocildes’s army was far too powerful to consider attacking. It would be close to disaster if the garrison of Astorga was relieved and marched off to join Bonnet, to add eight thousand men to Marmont’s growing force.

  It would be almost as bad if Bonnet’s division alone joined Marmont, but while Welbeloved might be successful in the first case, all he could hope for in the second case was to delay the merger until it was too late to be useful.

  He spoke at length to Santocildes. The general was concerned, but resolute. He was determined that he would not retreat at the mere threat from Bonnet’s veterans. At the same time, there was no chance that he would consider advancing past Astorga, leaving the garrisons of Astorga and Benavente in his rear.

  All he was prepared to do was search for a good defensive position to protect his army from an attack by Bonnet from the north and then maintain his basically ineffectual blockade of the two towns.

  No argument from Welbeloved would change his mind, but he was prepared, grudgingly, to allow Colonel Quintana and five of his squadrons to accompany the Hornets and help in the location and containment of the missing division.

  Welbeloved accepted the offer gravely, showing the bare minimum of enthusiasm. Secretly he was satisfied. He was being offered five or six hundred cavalrymen who had all received at least a couple of months of training by the Hornets. Already they were almost as good as the Wasps and would be much more of an asset than a liability, while bringing his mounted strength up to about twelve hundred men.