The Confrontation at Salamanca

by Geoffrey Watson

  Something was obviously not as it should be. The sergeant was not satisfied, but he was a veteran soldier and he had been presented with the choice of doing something about it on his own responsibility, or referring it to higher authority. No choice at all really. He sent for his lieutenant.

  The lieutenant was not amused. His bodily posture and exaggerated gestures showed that the sergeant was likely to be in trouble, whatever the outcome. He did, however, have a small glass that he used to scrutinise the village houses and streets.

  MacKay muttered an imprecation. He should have thought about it before. He must be getting old. It was indeed a peaceful scene. Far too peaceful for any Spanish village, even at siesta time. The sergeant, quite rightly, had expected to see people going about their business, but the peasants and fishermen had left. Not even a boat was tied up at the jetty.

  That didn’t mean anything to the lieutenant. He probably had visions of a dressing down from his captain for holding up the advance. A few sharp words were exchanged and the six men of the vanguard stepped out unenthusiastically toward the first of the houses.

  More than likely, it ensured their survival. They were within a yard or so of the village when MacKay gave the word and they found themselves staring down the muzzles of half a hundred muskets, from a distance where they could see fingers tightening on triggers. MacKay’ loud voice and improving french, invited them to keep walking and to hold their muskets out at arm’s length. An invitation that they were all very quick to accept.

  The sudden appearance of so many red-coated marines had a predictable effect on the lieutenant and the rest of his platoon, waiting to be given the all clear to advance.

  They scuttled back out of sight. The only thing that he was able to report was that there was a village that was occupied by redcoats, less than a hundred yards from the bend that they had to go around in order to reach it and that it had swallowed the six men of his vanguard.

  It was nowhere near enough information for his superiors, who must have told him to do his job properly and in a manner that would not bring further disgrace to his comrades.

  He was leading when the whole company of voltigeurs came bursting round the bend, spreading quickly left and right, up and down the slope, until a wide arrowhead of men was leaping forward toward the defences. The men on the road could move much more quickly and they formed the point of the broad arrow.

  Behind them, standing on the road by the bend, were several prettier uniforms of more senior officers, waiting for the information that would be revealed by what was essentially a forlorn hope.

  It was only a single company of marines, occupying the forty yards, centred on the road. They were shooting from cover and had decided to work in threes, taking it in turn to fire and then move to the rear to reload.

  The theory of such shooting was already familiar to them, but it was the Hornets that had shown them how to put it into practice more informally than their standard drill.

  Practice, it still was, but they knew that they could deliver between them, nearly five hundred aimed shots in sixty seconds. They concentrated instead on their marksmanship. There were only a hundred or so voltigeurs and every marine was entitled to his shot.

  It was a massacre: a forlorn hope with no survivors. It was messy, as the marines were still inclined to shoot according to the drill book and aim at the mass of men rather than individual targets. Many of the first casualties were hit by four or five balls at the same time and it was only the third or fourth shot that was forced to search for a target.

  Some crawling figures of wounded could be seen. Possibly some were only pretending to be wounded, but the firing had now stopped and they would not be harmed.

  The senior officers, standing as spectators did not escape either. The Hornets scattered on the slopes took exception to their callous disregard for the lives of their soldiers. It was less than a hundred yards. They were permitted to live to see the start of the slaughter, but none of them survived to make use of the information that had been bought at such cost.

  An hour later, a very emotional officer came under a white flag and was given permission for the recovery of the wounded. It was obvious that they would be able to study the defences while they were doing so, but all the Hornets and marines that had inflicted the damage had been relieved by then. The French would see no more than had the first reconnaissance party.

  Only a couple of hours were needed to clear the wounded. The dead were left where they lay, except on the road where they were moved to the side. A statement, perhaps, to say ‘we shall get around to burying them when we have settled accounts with you’.

  Maybe they were callous enough by this time to leave them altogether. After all their successful battles, enemy dead and wounded were plundered indiscriminately for clothes, coins, even buttons, by soldiers who may have been six months in arrears with their pay.

  By this time it was late evening. MacKay had traps set to warn of possible night attacks. He didn’t expect anything like that yet, but it must occur to the French sooner or later that they had the greater numbers and that the deadly marksmanship could not be repeated in the dark.

  * * *

  Twenty miles south, Captain Woodward was preoccupied with his search for ideal ambush sites along the valley of the River Cares, a tributary of the Deva.

  The valley was certainly narrow enough and winding enough for him to be able to cause confusion among the enemy, but at the lower levels there were numerous small woods and tangled copses. They provided ample cover for even the most inept skirmisher and the voltigeurs and chasseurs-à-pied were not inept, merely untrained to Hornet standards.

  After ten miles, he decided that he was being too picky. The afternoon was drawing out and in the mountains, the sun could vanish behind a hill and bring an extended twilight, quite out of keeping with the normally abrupt fall of darkness.

  Before it was too late, he opted for a two hundred-yard stretch where the road ran close to the river and the wooded and scrub area was mostly on the far side. The streambed was rocky with deep pools, but an agile man could leap across in places, from rock to rock.

  Lieutenant Evan Davies and his platoon waited at the end of the stretch. There was just about enough room for all of them to find cover and the French would not be able to bring sufficient strength to bear to present a line of more than eight bayonets.

  The French were in a hurry. They had dispensed with their normal vanguard in favour of a full company of chasseurs-à-pied. Moving at light infantry pace, they were sufficiently impressive to ensure that no guerrilla band would attempt to try conclusions in any ambush attempt.

  They had covered half the distance along the narrow stretch before Davies saw the tail of their marching column and blew his whistle to start his men firing.

  The result was not what he had been expecting. To be sure, the first four files were blasted, but Rabuteau must have given them some indication of the effectiveness of the Hornets and they must have listened, as the whole formation split up on the instant.

  The chasseurs went to ground or spread out down the bank of the stream and over onto the other side. Once there, they could use the trees and bushes as cover and approach to within thirty or forty yards of where the Hornets were lying.

  Although Rabuteau may have told them not to stay on their feet when fighting the Hornets, it was clear that they had not paid much attention to whatever else he may have said.

  The men on the ground were too far away to use their muskets effectively, even if the Hornets had been on their feet, yet they were well within the killing range of the rifles and they were wearing large shakos. 1 Platoon played ‘shoot the melon under the shako’ for five minutes, or varied it by waiting for a cloud of powder smoke and shooting the nearby partner when he scrambled to his feet to run forward.

  Davies was keeping an eye on the tree cover over on the other side of the stream and calculating that the chasseurs had lost thirty or forty men as casualties, when
he saw the next company of voltigeurs swarming into sight, spreading out and hurrying to join the fray.

  Even the Hornets could not cope with odds of that sort within such a short distance. He bellowed for every man to target the mass of voltigeurs and discourage their ardour, before breaking off and sprinting round the next bend for their horses.

  The howl of triumph from the French when they saw the dash for safety, was accompanied by a storm of shots, fired with no realistic hope of hitting anything.

  As with a shotgun, there were so many pieces of lead flying in the same direction that there was always the chance of an unlucky hit.

  Evan Davies was the last man out, after checking that all his men were clear. He felt a sudden massive blow to his ribs that sent him sprawling in agony and brought a couple of his men back to drag him to his horse and away from the swarm of troops that would be erupting around the bend within seconds.

  He clung desperately to his saddle, with men riding close on either side, for a long and agonising five minutes before they stopped to examine the damage. To say he was fortunate did not do justice to his own views. Nevertheless, it was a glancing shot that had been almost spent. It had spilt a lot of blood and possibly broken a couple of ribs. He gritted his teeth while they wound cloth about his chest and kept them gritted to breaking point on the ride to find the rest of the company.

  Jack Woodward was concerned. In his own way he was sympathetic, but Davies insisted that it was only a deep graze caused by a spent bullet. It was opportune at the moment to believe him, as of much greater concern was his account of the latest French reaction to a Hornet ambush. It would be of the first importance in future to think more carefully about defence when fighting against the odds. There was just the chance that the Hornets had become too complacent.

  CHAPTER 15

  “I have to own, Sir Joshua, that I had hoped, rather than expected that Santocildes and his Sixth Army should advance far enough to the east to cause concern to the French about the safety of their flank. If he could have pulled but a division away from Marmont and had been beat in doing so, he may have done more good for our joint cause than sitting around Astorga and entertaining the French in the garrison.”

  Lord Wellington was feeling frustrated and had been unable to relieve his feelings until Welbeloved had ridden in to his headquarters with the Spanish battalion of Hornets and reported on his efforts to drive Bonnet and his division far to the east.

  He could talk to Welbeloved frankly and know that it would go no further. He could not understand why it should be so, but the ex-American loyalist; who had fought for the British as a boy against the rebellious colonists, seemed not to be troubled with ambition. Almost, he had been forced to accept his present rank on the pretext that other general officers were lining up to claim that they should be given command of the Hornets; the naval division that Wellington had encouraged him to create.

  Lack of ambition or not, there had always been amazing achievements, as far back as the year ’98, when he had been working as first lieutenant to Captain Cockburn and had formed the second partner in a team whose exploits had often been compared to those of Nelson himself.

  Then, after a naval engagement that was so successful that he could no longer be denied his promotion to post captain, he found himself unemployed and without a ship. For one so disinterested in fame, he had obviously made many influential enemies among those who coveted great success, but found that it eluded them.

  Now, here he was, a major general in command of a division so lethal that it had proved difficult to fit it within the framework of the existing army. He was a Knight of the Bath for his services with the Hornets and he was the Conde de Alba for services to the Spanish cause and because he had married the Condesa.

  Welbeloved watched the face of the commander-in-chief while he was musing. It did not occur to him that it was he who was occupying Wellington’s thoughts. He assumed that his chief was itching to get to grips with the Army of Portugal and found Marmont’s refusal to fight puzzling and frustrating.

  “Have yew considered, My Lord, that Santocildes may be doing yew a valuable service by keeping all those garrison troops from joining Marmont and by posing as a potential threat to his flank?

  If he had dared to challenge the French, he should have been thrashed in very short order and all those garrisons added to Marmont’s strength.

  Yew could not have saved him. Yew should have lost thousands attempting to cross the Duero against the French control of the bridges.”

  “I should not have attempted it, Sir Joshua. Even with advantage in numbers I cannot afford to throw away two divisions or more before I can get to grips with him. We still have only the one army. Shall we lose it, or only one half of it and beat Marmont, then we have still lost the war.

  As you are aware, the Frogs have three other armies, in the south, the north and the east. They are all bigger than mine. Joseph is sitting in Madrid with a reserve of twenty thousand.

  I tell you, Sir Joshua, if I cannot get an advantage that shall give me the prospect of complete victory, then I must retire and come back when I can.

  I do, however, suspect that Marmont is building up his army and looking for that same advantage before he commits himself.”

  The commander-in-chief was confirming what Welbeloved had already worked out for himself. “Napoleon gave Marmont his marshal’s baton, My Lord, after he proved that he could command an army and win battles. I know that yew did not expect him to fight at a disadvantage with a vastly smaller army than ours.

  I wager that yew respect the way he has handled this situation. He has the smaller army and he is copying yor own tactics. In no way does he intend to fight until he has all his reserves and he is baiting yew into attacking an almost impregnable position, just as yew have often done to the French.”

  “The similarities had not escaped my notice.” There was a wry smile on his lips. “It is a case of the biter being bit and I do not intend to sacrifice my men as they did. I do not confide that Marmont shall be as patient as I was forced to be.”

  “Hmmph!” Welbeloved scratched his head. “I should imagine that Marmont is an attacking general. Boney encourages them all to go flat out, without considering the lives of their soldiers.

  All yor distractions in the north and the south have ensured that he is getting little outside help and it is only Bonnet that shall soon join him and bring his army to within a division of yor numbers.

  That may be enough for him if he believes that yew are wedded to defence. In truth, that can in no way be considered a strange belief, if he knows little about yor first forays into Portugal.

  George Vere taught me never to wager, at least not against him, but I confide that Marmont shall be looking for trouble within hours of Bonnet’s arrival.”

  “I shall not take your wager, Sir Joshua. I am continually amazed at how closely our thoughts move together. It matters not. I shall fight defensively unless and until Marmont does something rash and he has never struck me as rash; perhaps a mite adventurous on occasion.

  Tell me though of these Spanish cavalry that you have brought to join us. Can they be employed with confidence? Are they, do you think, in the same class as the Portuguese? There has been improvement out of all recognition with them since Beresford’s system has begun to have its effect.”

  “Yor favourite Scotchman started their training last year, My Lord. They were showing so much promise when I arrived a few weeks ago, that we merged their squadrons with our companies for a short time.

  Yew have my report on our squabble with Foy around Toro? It was Quintana’s cavalry that destroyed his wagon train and much of his supplies, making it necessary for him to abandon his advance on Santocildes. All that with only one man wounded.

  As a cavalry unit I rate them as good as the French. As marksmen and skirmishers they are better than tirailleurs or voltigeurs and better than most of our own light infantry. They can’t shoot as far and as accurately a
s our ninety-fifth, but are faster and just as accurate up to a hundred yards.

  They also have officers who have been trained to think like Hornets. Perhaps the most complimentary thing I can say is that I am content to have them fighting alongside my men. There are no others that I can truly say that about.”

  Wellington smiled thinly. “Matters are becoming clearer, Sir Joshua. You and your men have invested time and sweat in these Diegos. You have converted them to worshipping the same gods of war and have barefacedly stolen them from Santocildes, because you do not consider that he can use them properly.”

  Welbeloved grinned widely. “Now that yew put it like that, My Lord, it does appear that I dislike letting their talents go to waste. Mind yew, Santocildes still has the better of the bargain. There are another eight or nine hundred cavalry still with him and about fifteen hundred light infantry, all of whom have had training under MacKay and me.

  Put them together with Luis Quintana in command and they shall make the best Spanish brigade in the country. First though, yew need to persuade Santocildes to give away the best part of his army.”

  The idea seemed to amuse Wellington. “The suggestion has its attractions, but however little the support we get from our allies, it shall never do to upset the general that way.

  You have done well to acquire such a useful, additional force and more to the point, have managed to convince me that I cannot attach it to the command of any of my cavalry generals for any number of reasons.

  The only sensible solution is to make you responsible for them and I shall accept no denial from you that it is exactly as you had schemed when you brought them to me.”

  “I shall attempt no such denial, My Lord. We have both recognised the difficulties incumbent in fitting the Hornets into a regular role on a battlefield. Incorporating these Spaniards into the division shall give us a more balanced force.”