The Confrontation at Salamanca

by Geoffrey Watson

  Only the faintest of breezes disturbed the clouds of powder smoke, both from the guns and from the exploding shells against the convent walls. Instantly it became more difficult to vary the trajectory with the precision that they were trained to. Spotters dashed sideways to call the fall of the shot.

  The rifles were not yet hindered by smoke and reacted to the perceived movement of musket barrels and gun muzzles by starting a four-times-split volleying that sent thirty balls seeking a target every three or four seconds.

  Nobody could guarantee a killing shot through a narrow slit, but the range was practically point blank for the riflemen and enough shots went through the slits and embrasures to dampen the enthusiasm of the defenders, who couldn’t really see what they were aiming at anyway. That was before powder smoke eddied slowly across the cleared area where the Vespãos lay.

  Two shells from the third salvo blew holes through the tiles and then all four mortars had the range exposing wooden rafters and slats over a wide area, with several shells falling through the gaps and exploding deep inside the building.

  Presented with so many wooden beams and rafters, the red-hot twelve-pound shot soon had the whole of the roof ablaze and with so many mortar shells now exploding inside the building, the garrison of San Cayetano surrendered.

  The roofs of the other two forts immediately became targets for the mortars, though not for the heated shot, as they had no direct line of fire.

  It was not needed. With exploding shells coming down through the roof, the other two garrisons hardly hesitated before following the example of their comrades in San Cayetano. By early afternoon, all shooting had stopped and Wellington’s engineers were moving in to strip and demolish the buildings.

  * * *

  There were other reasons why Lieutenant Colonel Günther Roffhack wished to leave any confrontation to General Bock’s dragoons and whatever French forces were advancing west along the south bank of the River Tormes

  His battalion was doing what it did better than any other soldiers in Lord Wellington’s army. The squadrons were reporting on all movements of the French army so that Marshal Marmont; a master of manoeuvre; should not catch Wellington at a sudden disadvantage by concentrating greater numbers at a potentially weak area.

  He had initially agreed with George Vere that this sudden incursion across the river at Huerta, was essentially a feint to put Wellington off balance and to find out more about his dispositions.

  Then he had heard George say that the Peer himself was taking it seriously enough to move two divisions to counter it. He knew that Napoleon’s marshals were thoroughly professional soldiers. If Marmont’s probe found any weakness, it was more than likely to be exploited to the full.

  George and he had questioned the need for what seemed an overreaction, but it now appeared that Wellington was fully aware of Marmont’s reputation and this was a probe that would find no weakness whatsoever.

  Nevertheless, it would do no harm if he took his two companies towards Huerta to check that his scouts had not been mistaken and that it was indeed only two or three thousand Frenchmen that had crossed the river.

  It would be strange if the Hornets couldn’t cause some mischief when the probing column realised the strength of the opposition and scuttled back over the bridge.

  He was almost disappointed when he found the scouts he had left to watch. Other than a few hundred men to protect the southern flank of the probe, there was no evidence to show that extra troops were being sent over the bridge at Huerta.

  To be absolutely sure, Lieutenant Ernst Bruch and his troop were sent dashing a dozen miles south to the next bridge at Alba de Tormes. If no French were crossing there, Lord Wellington’s two divisions would not have been needed, other than to convince the enemy that he was too strong for them everywhere.

  By the morning, he realised that his fears were groundless. No French were south at Alba and the column from Huerta was no more than three thousand strong, six miles long and had a substantial, but porous defensive screen guarding its southern flank. Porous in so far as the Hornets were concerned, at any rate.

  Nothing seemed to be happening anywhere until the sound of guns was heard from the direction of Salamanca. Even at ten miles, the distinct sound of the double explosions of the mortars could be told apart from the heavier cracks of the cannon.

  It provoked the French column to action. A positive concerto of bugles signalled that Bock’s dragoons and Marmont’s chasseurs were earning their pay.

  As was to be expected, all the approaches to the bridge at Huerta, which was the escape route for the French, were heavily guarded. What is more, the guards were all infantry and heavily entrenched. Even the superior weapons of the Hornissen were of little advantage in such a situation, so Roffhack gave his captains freedom to range along the flank of the enemy column and cause as much mayhem as they could. The two captains, Weiss and Fischer, took this as a rare treat and turned loose their eight lieutenants with their troops to find their own amusement.

  It was rolling, open country on the south bank of the Tormes between Huerta and Salamanca and each lieutenant was hoping to find troops of cavalry that they could torment. It was not to be. Every horseman in the detachment was actively engaged in a direct confrontation with the dragoons of General Bock and the entire column had come to a halt and adopted a defensive posture, while the cavalry determined the strength of the Anglo-Portuguese in the vanguard.

  Being light infantry, their defensive system was predictable. In a battalion of voltigeurs, for example, one company would be deployed in skirmish order up to two hundred yards south of the road, along which the other three or four companies would be resting while remaining in ranks, in order of march. The northern flank of the column needed no guard, being only a few hundred yards from the river.

  All the French skirmishers wore tall, angular shakos that made even the most skilful of them; the tirailleurs, most visible and obvious, in spite of their tan coloured tunics.

  Always on the lookout for the most effective way of dealing with a situation, the lieutenants early decided that a single troop was simply not big enough to deal efficiently with a full company of skirmishers, backed by a battalion of reserves.

  Without really giving it much thought, they re-formed into four pairs of troops and went hunting; half mounted and half skirmishing.

  The two troops would locate a resting battalion. One troop of thirty men would dismount and engage the skirmishers from two hundred yards. Most of the German battalion still had only the modified carbines with a lethal range of two hundred yards, well beyond the probability of a serious response from the French.

  They started picking targets and shooting by pairs, fifteen accurate shots every eight to ten seconds. If only half the shots were successful, nearly half of the French skirmishing company was out of action in just over a minute.

  At about this time, the rest of the suffering company decided that it was stupid to remain and be killed without being able to reply effectively. They either played dead or scrambled to their feet and ran back toward the battalion.

  This was the signal for the second, mounted troop of Hornissen to draw their swords and attack the fugitives. It had two consequences. Many of the fugitives threw away their muskets and cried for quarter or fell flat on their faces, hugging the ground.

  The rest of the battalion, having seen the one-sided exchange, was starting to organise a counter movement, when they saw a troop of cavalry charge into the survivors.

  Instinctive infantry reaction to cavalry required them to form square and their bugles were obligingly changing their calls and urging them to do so.

  The result was a milling mob of four or five hundred men who, had they known it, were quite safe. Even all mounted, the sixty men of the two troops were not so foolish as to attack that number of armed adversaries.

  While identical scenes were being played out at four separate places down the column, the sudden cessation of the bombardment in Salaman
ca was noticed only in those areas that were not under attack.

  Perhaps it was a signal that the French commander had been hoping not to hear because the whole diversion was merely a gesture of support to the garrisons of the forts.

  Whatever it was, bugles sounded urgently and the whole column disengaged and began to hurry back toward the bridge at Huerta.

  The Hornissen let them go. All of them were back across the bridge by the following dawn. If it had been intended to test Wellington’s strength, Marmont now knew that it was more than he could cope with at this time.

  When Roffhack and his men followed them across the bridge in due time, they linked up with their other two companies. Joining the Portuguese Vespãos to the north of Salamanca, they found the French in full retreat toward the line of the River Duero, fifty miles to the northwest.

  Lord Wellington, who had been gathering his strength for a full confrontation, realised that it was unlikely to happen until Marmont was much stronger. It is difficult to say whether he regretted not attacking immediately, but it is possible that his deeply ingrained instincts had insisted that he had to fight only a defensive battle against an opponent who still outnumbered him many times throughout the whole of Spain.

  Nothing but an overwhelming victory here was acceptable and he was quite resigned to waiting for another, more advantageous opportunity.

  CHAPTER 10

  The time had come, Welbeloved decided, to wind up his operation in the southern foothills of the Cantabrian Mountains and take his 3rd Battalion back to join Wellington.

  He knew that Lord Wellington had started to move on Salamanca by the middle of June. It was now into the fourth week and he had no idea what was happening in and around the city. For all he knew, there could have been a deciding battle by now and only his German and Portuguese Hornet Battalions would have been involved.

  News had come in from his new base at Ribadeo on the north coast. MacKay and the 1st Battalion had overseen the expulsion of the French from the Asturias and that they were now co-operating with Admiral Popham, who was just beginning a series of attacks on the coastal towns in eastern Cantabria and Viscaya, in collaboration with the guerrilleros and a small Spanish army.

  That ought to discourage General Caffarelli, the new commander of the Army of the North, from sending any reinforcements to Marmont.

  Welbeloved’s task; to try and locate the two ‘missing’ French divisions in the north and prevent them from joining Marmont; had so far succeeded, but not yet entirely satisfactorily.

  One division had been located doing garrison duties at Astorga, Benavente and Zamora, where the first two towns were being besieged by General Santocildes and his Army of Galicia. As he had no siege cannon, he could only hope to starve them out, but at least they would not be joining Marmont.

  The other division; that of General Bonnet; was north of him now and travelling very slowly eastwards, probing every southern road in an attempt to join Marmont. Colonel Quintana of Santocildes’s cavalry was blocking the only three suitable roads remaining to the French. Deny them access to those three and Bonnet would have to make a wide detour to try and find a way through from the east.

  Welbeloved knew that such a march would take at least another ten days, by which time they would surely be too late to influence matters around Salamanca?

  If that outcome could be arranged satisfactorily, his task could be considered complete and he could rejoin his other two battalions and have a greater participation in the main struggle between Wellington and Marmont, always assuming that it had not been resolved already.

  He sent Captain Burfoot and A Company south to try and find out what was happening with the opposing armies and gave Colonel Quintana the chance that he had been dreaming of; direct confrontation with any of Bonnet’s probes down the remaining three minor roads to León and Salamanca.

  Don Luis Quintana was given to understand that the Hornets would be backing his actions on all three roads, but would only take part if his men were unable to deal with particularly determined and persistent probes.

  By this time, Quintana was so obsessed with the need to demonstrate the quality of his Hornet-trained horsemen that he would rather die than call for assistance; unless, as Welbeloved pointed out, there was an opportunity to trap a large number of French between them by working together.

  He had five squadrons with him, each with four troops and a nominal figure of thirty men to a troop: over six hundred mounted men in all. Every man was away from the restricting control of General Santocildes and his army. Not that Santocildes needed his cavalry at the present with the Army of Galicia. They were only passively besieging the French garrisons of two or three towns and sieges were no place for horsemen: even for horsemen who had been taught the art of fighting on foot by the famous Hornets.

  He had studied carefully the remarkably detailed maps that General Welbeloved was using. He had never seen anything quite so comprehensive and invaluable to a military commander and reflected on the fact that it was the British who had been the ones to produce such details, when the inhabitants of Spain still used what were really primitive sketches.

  Welbeloved had shown him where the French divisions of General Bonnet had been attempting to move south to León, using the two main routes from the Asturias. This had been thwarted by the Hornets and it was now his turn to take the responsibility for stopping the enemy coming south on the remaining three minor roads.

  Of course, there were other tracks that could be used, but the maps showed quite clearly that every one of them was only a split in the hills: desfiladeros, high sided defiles cut out by rivers and streams where two men abreast would have difficulty in passing.

  He allocated a squadron to each road and kept two squadrons with him as a tactical reserve. The commanders of each squadron knew how the Hornets had dealt with the probes down the other two roads and would try and follow their example as closely as possible. It was true that they did not as yet have the same expertise and weapons, but they were convinced that man for man they were a lot better than the French cavalry and would not hesitate to take on numbers in excess of their own.

  They should have known that in the mountains, nothing is ever quite the same as the time before and that a minor road can often become a cross between a steep-sided defile and a narrow valley, where face to face combat is the only option to forces moving in opposite directions.

  Even the Hornets would not have used quite the same tactics and it did not take long for the bright young captains commanding two of the squadrons to work out what approach best suited the conditions.

  The French never even considered the middle one of the three roads. On the first, the Spanish commander sent only half a troop ahead of his main body and concentrated on having a defence behind them whenever the track narrowed.

  Half way along one particular section, his half troop was confronted suddenly by a full squadron of chasseurs, only three or four hundred yards away, when they came pouring round a bend.

  The sergeant leading the Spaniards turned them smartly about and cantered unhurriedly back down the track to where his comrades were waiting. Perhaps it was the muted colouring of the retreating Spaniards that made the French suspect that they were guerrilleros. It would certainly explain the uncharacteristic enthusiasm that started an immediate and undisciplined pursuit to within fifty yards of the waiting ambush.

  The road would not permit more than half a dozen men to ride abreast at this point and narrowed even further toward the ambush point.

  The waiting Spaniards shot them down with admirably controlled volleys from their ‘improved’ carbines. Only about forty of them had managed to find concealment and only the first ones to open fire managed to reload and deliver another shot.

  Their new-found accuracy was such that fully a third of the chasseurs were blown from their saddles and the rest turned and fled.

  The Spanish reserve that had remained mounted, erupted from the narrow defile in pursuit,
stopping abruptly when a second squadron came into sight and immediately became inextricably mixed with the fleeing fugitives.

  Quintana’s men rapidly formed an echelon, three deep across the widest part of the track and the rest of the squadron, dismounted, found skirmish positions in front of the ambush. They waited.

  It was a stand-off. For half an hour the French stood and watched them. This was outside their experience, but it was obvious that at least a regiment of infantry would be required to carry such a well-defended position.

  A white cloth came ahead of a delegation, asking to recover their casualties and the mounted Spaniards retired to watch while they took their wounded, left their dead and went back the way they had come.

  It took fully a day to follow them back, very cautiously to their main body and watch them all, very reluctantly move off east when the chasseurs had reported the strength of the defenders and the impractical nature of the road.

  That was effectively the end of the clashes with Bonnet’s division. No probe was sent down the next road. Admittedly it started off in the north as a fairly steep defile, but it did bring home to the French that narrow mountain tracks that could be defended by two malefic-minded men and a dog, were a waste of time and resources, particularly eatable resources that would run out if they were forced to stay in these mountains any longer.

  Captain Juan Flores was commanding the squadron moving slowly up the most easterly of the roads. A younger son of a younger son, he was nevertheless of the aristocracy, but had much more to prove than some of his brother captains, who were younger sons of elder sons, even of heirs.

  Not that birth was a matter of supreme importance any longer in Colonel Quintana’s command since the training and style of the Avispónes had been adopted. Only last week Colonel Quintana had called him Don Juan with no awkwardness whatsoever and General Welbeloved and his Condesa both called him simply Juan.

  It did matter to him, nevertheless, that his squadron should be seen to be as good as and better, if possible, than those of his four brother captains. It was therefore infuriating of the French to deny his men the glory that should have been theirs.