By this point, however, the pressures of such sustained operations were beginning to make themselves felt, and many of the regiments that had joined during the weeks prior to Salamanca were now in a poor state due to the rigors of campaigning having brought about a return of the fevers that had bedeviled them since Walcheren. Thus, although the allies were able to enter Madrid on August 12, a substantial body of men had to be left there when Wellington continued in pursuit of the Armée de Portugal, with entire battalions detached from their divisions in order to recuperate. With numbers thus reduced, and the French beginning to rally, the allied advance was checked before the walls of Burgos. Hearing that Soult had abandoned Andalusia and was marching north with 60,000 men, Wellington accordingly fell back, first to Salamanca where the army was able to regroup, and then to the Portuguese frontier around Ciudad Rodrigo.82 Although Wellington’s troops were largely unmolested by the French, whose combined forces considerably exceeded those of the allies, the latter stages of the retreat placed the army under great strain, with bad weather and logistical mismanagement adding to exhaustion to bring the whole force close to collapse. Once the last stragglers had come in, it was reckoned that some 3,000 men had been lost during the retreat, leading to an irate Wellington castigating the army as a whole for losses that he perceived to be due to indiscipline in the ranks and neglect on the part of the officers.83 Nevertheless, the 1812 campaign as a whole had been a huge achievement, clearing Andalusia and central Spain, and allowing the reconcentration of Wellington’s forces into a single field army. However, strategic planning could no longer take into account the situation in the peninsula alone. Not only did Napoleon’s defeat in Russia shift the focus of grand strategy back to central Europe for the first time since 1809, but, on the other side of the Atlantic, Britain had become embroiled in a whole new conflict.
Because of the steady rotation of its most combat-ready units away from overseas garrisons in order to concentrate a worthwhile field army in Europe, Britain began the War of 1812 against the United States with only a skeleton force of a little under 10,000 regular troops in the various commands making up British North America.84 The bulk of these forces had seen little prior active service, and included a substantial number of locally raised Fencible units. Canada also had its Militia to help take on some of the burden, and although many of its members formed part of sedentary units for local defense, this source also furnished six Embodied Militia battalions for more active duty and a further two volunteer battalions.85 As was the case in Europe and India, good use was also made of indigenous allies, with substantial numbers of Native Americans playing an effective part in the early stages of the war thanks to successful diplomatic efforts on the part of the Indian Department.86 A further advantage was the mobility provided by use of water transport, and this enabled troops to be rapidly shifted to threatened points. In this way, Major General Isaac Brock, commanding in Upper Canada, was able first to secure the surrender of one U.S. force at Detroit on August 16, and then, at the cost of his own life, to defeat another on the Niagara frontier at the Battle of Queenston Heights on October 13. Nevertheless, with the United States unwilling to give up the contest, it was evident that British reinforcements would be required to force a decision. Thus, whilst events in Europe finally presented the opportunity for Britain to play a meaningful role in a renewed anti–French coalition, the country was forced to do so with one eye cast over its shoulder.87
An immediate effect of the fact that the peninsular army was no longer Britain’s sole priority was that Wellington was forced to relinquish the services of several units that had been particularly worn down during the 1812 campaign. Although these would be replaced by fresh troops, this withdrawal marked the beginning of a clash of wills that drew in both York and the Earl of Bathurst, newly appointed secretary of state for war and the colonies. Yet whilst he was husbanding every battalion, Wellington began his new campaign with a force that was more powerful than ever since some 9,000 reinforcements had joined by the time that campaigning resumed in May 1813, many of them reassigned from Cadiz and Gibraltar now that the south of Spain was free of French forces. Wellington not only began his campaign with 52,484 British and 28,792 Portuguese troops in his field army but was now also generalissimo of the Spanish armies, which, rejuvenated over the past year by British financial aid, provided a further 46,292 men for the main offensive.88 In contrast, the French in the peninsula were weakened through having had to supply reinforcements for central Europe. Even by combining the troops of three nominally distinct armies, Joseph Bonaparte could muster only 63,000 men to Wellington’s 69,000 when he stood at bay outside Vitoria, and was defeated in a manner so complete that the achievement won Wellington the baton of a field marshal.89 In the aftermath of the battle, the French survivors crossed the Pyrenees and regrouped around Bayonne, where they were reorganized into a single Armée d’Espagne under Soult, whilst Wellington set down to besiege the last French garrisons south of the mountains. A French counteroffensive during late July achieved some initial successes in the Pyrenean passes, with Soult managing to get within sight of Pamplona before being turned back after several disjointed days of hard fighting.90 Defeat of the French counteroffensive allowed siege operations to resume and for San Sebastián, which had withstood one assault on July 25, to finally be stormed on August 31, albeit with heavy losses during the attack and considerable disorder in the aftermath.91
With the French now in full flight over the Pyrenees for a second time, only eastern Spain remained host to substantial hostile forces. Between 1810 and 1812, Marshal Louis Suchet’s Armée d’Aragon had methodically cleared the Spanish from much of Aragon and Valencia, and this eventually compelled the detachment of British troops to support the remaining Spanish forces. Other than a single battalion and some artillery reassigned from Cadiz, the British contingent was drawn entirely from the force based on Sicily, that station again demonstrating its utility as a central base for expeditions around the Mediterranean. However, the employment of troops from Sicily also ensured that these troops remained under the orders of the commander on Sicily, Lt. General Lord William Bentinck, and meant that operations were at times restricted by conflicting strategic priorities stemming from Bentinck’s preoccupation with events in Italy. Lt. General Frederick Maitland commanded the initial expeditionary force, which landed at Alicante in August 1812; he then fell ill over the following winter and was replaced by Lt. General Sir John Murray. Murray was able to help the Spanish check French offensive moves during early 1813, but failed badly when subsequently tasked with capturing Tarragona. Bentinck then briefly assumed command in person, working with the Spanish to push Suchet back over the Ebro, but his heart was always drawn to Italy. Accordingly, he turned the Catalonian command over to Lt. General William Clinton, who continued to cooperate with the Spanish armies until the close of the Peninsular War.92
Although initially useful in shoring up Spanish resistance, this 12,000-strong force subsequently achieved little of value, and in April 1814 was broken up with half going to reinforce Wellington and the remainder returning to Bentinck for operations in Italy, although neither element reached its destination before the war’s end.93 In the meantime, with forces drawn directly from Sicily, Bentinck was able to assemble an Anglo-Sicilian force of 14,658 all ranks, including three battalions of regular British foot and three more from the KGL, and land them at Livorno during March 1814. Although these forces were able to help secure the eviction of the French from Genoa in the closing days of the war, their operations were limited by Bentinck’s ill-advised meddling in Italian politics, and the troops saw little action.94
By the autumn of 1813, with Wellington successful in Spain and the continental powers of the Sixth Coalition having finally obtained the upper hand in Germany, Britain was at last in a position to reassess its strategic commitments. Whilst there were successes that could potentially be exploited, there were also new problems to be surmounted. What was more, with victory no
w in sight, there was the postwar world to be considered, and if Britain expected to have a say in the settlement of European affairs then it was vital that its armies were seen to be doing their utmost. Serious thought was therefore given to leaving the Spanish and Portuguese to defend the line of the Pyrenees whilst Wellington’s British forces were shipped to northern Europe to join the allied advance. Wellington was able to produce arguments sufficient to demonstrate the flaws in such a movement, but found that his attempts to obtain additional manpower were increasingly fruitless, although he was more successful in resisting York’s attempts to reclaim units already serving in the peninsula. Nevertheless, with attrition outstripping reinforcements, Wellington’s forces did shrink slightly during the closing months of the war, with the strength of his British contingent peaking at 63,595 rank and file in November 1813.95 North America, too, received little by way of reinforcement from home, although reassignment of units from other colonial commands allowed for a steady increase in troop numbers that was sufficient to turn back the amateurish and halfhearted American plans for an autumn advance on Montreal at the battles of Chateauguay and Crysler’s Farm.96 Only in the far west were the Americans able to achieve superiority, allowing them to crush their British and Native American opponents at the Battle of the Thames on October 5, 1813.97
Since it was impossible to remove manpower from either active theater, any new campaign would need to be mounted using the increasingly slender resources available from the home islands. So far as the armies of the Sixth Coalition were concerned, British gold had helped bankroll them, and British equipment had helped fit them out, thus, although a small force had gone to the Baltic under Major General Samuel Gibbs in mid-1813 to guard the ports through which this flood of supplies was sent, no major military presence was needed to give Britain continued credibility as an ally. A few British units did make it onto the battlefields of Gohrde and Leipzig, but this was as much by accident as design.98 Matters changed, however, as the fighting shifted toward the Low Countries where revolt broke out in favor of the House of Orange. As in 1809, control of this area was deemed vital to secure Britain’s maritime interests, and it was therefore politically expedient to send troops there in force. By recalling battalions from the Baltic, and scraping the depots of Britain for available men, a corps with an eventual strength of 11,812 rank and file was assembled by early 1814, but it is testament to the poor quality of many of the units concerned that, of this number, only 8,597 were actually fit and present for duty.99 Command of this dubious army was offered to Sir Thomas Graham, who accepted only against his better judgment. In the event, Graham was successful in a minor action at Merksem on January 13, 1814, but could not take Antwerp without Prussian help, and failed in an attempt to take the smaller fortress of Bergen op Zoom by storm on the night of March 8. Only with the coming of peace was Graham able to negotiate an entry into Antwerp after the French had evacuated the place.100
The opening of this third front was in many ways the final straw for Britain’s manpower systems, which were now stretched to a point that they could no longer be counted on to provide a continued supply of combat-worthy manpower. The nature of these failings, and the increasingly drastic measures taken to try and counter them, form the subject of a later chapter, but it became clear that a breaking point was being reached and that the last six months of hostilities, up to Napoleon’s first abdication in April 1814, represent a period of overstretch more severe even than that of 1809. It is true that, on paper, there were still 51,530 regular troops stationed in Britain in January 1814, and a further 12,303 in Ireland,101 but this is a misleading total since the bulk of these troops represented the depots of units that were already overseas. Those complete units still at home, barring those retained for internal policing duties and a handful of other exceptions such as the Channel Island garrisons, were those that had not been deemed fit to accompany Graham’s expedition to the Netherlands; when one appreciates the parlous state of many of the battalions that did embark with Graham, the condition of those left behind should need no elaboration.
Under such circumstances, it is therefore rather disconcerting to see that Wellington, even in the closing months of the war, was still doing his best not only to hang on to every last man that he had but also to gain any potential reinforcements going.102 This, too, when Soult was steadily being stripped of more and more of his best troops to provide reinforcements for Napoleon’s own struggles in the north. Such single-mindedness on Wellington’s part would be understandable had every man been needed in the front line, but once the allies had broken out of the Pyrenees and into France itself, following successes at the Nivelle, Bidasoa, and Nive, the victorious troops became increasingly dispersed and diverted by secondary tasks.103 Indeed, the end of the war found Wellington facing Soult at Toulouse with six of his Anglo-Portuguese divisions, plus a Spanish corps; two further divisions, along with more Spaniards, invested Bayonne, and the last division—Lord Dalhousie’s Seventh—was occupying Bordeaux. Admittedly, the French remained full of fight. Soult’s army put up a strong though ultimately futile resistance at Orthez on February 27, and again at Toulouse on April 10, whilst the garrison at Bayonne launched a most damaging sortie at the very end of the war, taking Lt. General Sir John Hope prisoner.104 In order to strengthen his case, Wellington continued to express doubts almost until the end of hostilities that a separate peace between France and Spain might yet free Suchet’s army to unite with that of Soult. Nevertheless, it was a gross and ungrateful exaggeration for Wellington to describe the powerful field army that he commanded at the conclusion of the Peninsular War, as he did to Bathurst in his last and most unappealing complaint over the lack of reinforcements, as merely a “handful of brave men.”105
It is hard to escape the conclusion that, by April 1814, Britain’s systems of military manpower were on the verge of collapse, and that peace in April 1814 came at a most timely moment. However, rather than consolidate, Britain’s politicians sought to return to a peace establishment in Europe whilst, at the same time, sending a substantial reinforcement to North America in order to bring a swift conclusion to what was now a largely pointless conflict. At the beginning of 1814, before the arrival of reinforcements from Europe, regular forces in Canada totaled around 14,500 rank and file; by the end of the year, this had almost doubled with a peak of 27,918 in January 1815. In similar fashion, forces based on Nova Scotia grew from less than 4,000 at the end of 1813 to over 7,000 a year later, allowing for the local commander, Lt. General Sir John Sherbrooke, to carry out offensive operations deep into Maine.106 In Canada itself, fighting still retained a defensive character, since the increase in British numbers coincided with a rise in American capabilities. The first indication of the threat posed by the rejuvenated American forces was their occupation of much of the Niagara peninsula during July 1814, capturing Fort Erie and defeating a British brigade at Chippewa. Directed by the senior officer in Upper Canada, Lt. General Sir Gordon Drummond, subsequent fighting, at Lundy’s Lane on July 25 and then during the botched attempt to recapture Fort Erie, largely degenerated into stalemate. It was eventually the presence of Anglo-Canadian naval forces on Lake Ontario, threatening American supply lines, that forced the American retreat in late autumn, bringing an end to major operations on the Canadian front.107
Although the Niagara campaign had involved reinforcements from Europe, including units drawn both from Wellington’s disbanded army and from the Mediterranean, the bulk of the 1814 reinforcements were committed to offensive operations elsewhere. As early as January 1814, Bathurst looked ahead to a future European peace and envisaged the massing of the best troops from Wellington’s army into a single powerful corps of 20,000 men by which a knockout blow could be delivered. In practice, nothing like this concentration of force was achieved, and by the time the troops were available the proposal had been scaled back to 12,000 or 14,000 men only.108 The closest thing to Bathurst’s intentions was an 11,000-strong force—roughly half of th
e men newly arrived reinforcements—assembled for an advance by way of Lake Champlain in a campaign that was overseen by the governor general of British North America, Lt. General Sir George Prévost. Poor relations between Prévost and his subordinates did not make for effective cooperation, and the campaign was sent permanently into reverse following a failed attack on the main American depot at Plattsburg on September 11, 1814.109
Although failure at Plattsburg owed much to Prévost’s inability to coordinate land and naval forces, this was not the case elsewhere, and a more effective partnership was developed along the Atlantic Seaboard. With support from the Royal Navy, Major General Robert Ross was able to land with an expeditionary force of 4,800 men and briefly occupy Washington. A subsequent move against Baltimore was less successful, with Ross being killed by a sharpshooter during the advance on the city, and the attempt was ultimately abandoned once it became clear that the American defenses were stronger than had been anticipated.110 Whilst burning the White House was undoubtedly an excellent coup, such operations represented another return to the tried and tested methods of using the British Army to extend the reach of the Royal Navy, and would not have been out of place in the previous Anglo-American conflict forty years previously. The same, indeed, could be said for the war’s last operation. The only difference with the expedition to the Gulf of Mexico that culminated in defeat at the Battle of New Orleans on January 8, 1815, was the greater size of the forces involved: 8,869 men under Major General Edward Pakenham, although not all of these were present at the battle itself.111
By the time that New Orleans had been fought, the political situation in Europe was rapidly deteriorating to the extent that the former allies might end up fighting amongst themselves over the spoils of victory. These pressures contributed to the reduction in the planned reinforcement for North America, and also hastened the Anglo-American peace negotiations at Ghent, which were eventually concluded on Christmas Eve 1814—prior to the fighting at New Orleans.112 Yet, despite the unsettled political situation, the British military establishment was already being cut back. Some of this was done with positive effect, with twenty-four weak second and third battalions being disbanded to bring their regiments’ first battalions up to strength. Even so, there were substantial cutbacks, with the cavalry and artillery establishments being reduced and a wholesale disbanding of the veteran battalions and foreign regiments. The bulk of the KGL was concentrated in the Netherlands, where the remnants of Graham’s army remained in garrison, in preparation for its breaking up and incorporation into the reraised Hanoverian army, a measure which, once fully implemented, would have removed several thousand veterans from the British establishment.113 Several of the émigré units were also broken up, and there was also a heavy cull from ranks of the various colonial corps. Although events would preserve the KGL to fight at Waterloo, the brief peace saw 37,000 Britons and a further 10,000 foreigners discharged from the British Army.114
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