Wellington Against Massena

by David Buttery

  Signal fires observed in the direction of Celorico and Guarda, along with extensive use of the British semaphore communications, caused some consternation in the French camp and Massena called a council of war. He speculated that Wellington might be contemplating a relief attempt for the beleaguered town. Rumours were rife that the Patriarch of Libson had arrived at Guarda and, in his capacity as a council member, was pressing Wellington to act. Massena was sufficiently concerned to order Reynier and Junot to bring their corps closer to Almeida to be within two hours’ march of the fortress. Massena would have been overjoyed if Wellington had attempted a relief across the Côa, as the precipitous area was easily defensible. Yet he suspected that Wellington would resist such foolish counsels and refuse to hazard his army in such a venture.

  At five o’clock on the morning of 26 August the French began bombarding Almeida. Initially their fire was unimpressive, with the artillery finding the range difficult. Some of the rear batteries even dropped shells into the second parallel trench, killing some of their own sappers, but after a few hours shot was slamming into the São Pedro bastion. General Lazowski, directing the siege operation, reported that the besieged were directing very effective counter fire against them and several guns on both sides were dismounted and put out of action. Howitzers and mortars fired over the defences into the town, hoping to kill artillerymen bringing up more ammunition, and soon many buildings were set ablaze in Almeida.

  The bombardment continued over the next day. The intensity of the fire was so great that workers digging an approach trench towards the São Pedro bastion had to be withdrawn, several of them being killed in the attempt. As the guns thundered on a massive explosion rent the evening sky. The French gunners paused as debris showered down, with masonry falling into the trench works, killing some of the besiegers. Several Portuguese guns had been swept from the walls into the ditch and a large fire could be seen raging in the town. Pelet recalled how he felt when he heard the explosion:

  ’It is the fortress,’ I shouted with a feeling of horror and joy. ‘It is certainly ours!’ My thoughts passed quickly to our army. Now it would be able to concentrate against Wellington’s army, which was scattered weakly in cantonments. I said to myself, ‘Fortune has given us Almeida, but it has also given us Wellington and his army.’127

  Pelet’s confidence concerning the British army was premature, but it was plain that a major disaster had befallen Almeida and it could not hold out much longer. Cox ordered the garrison to man the walls and maintain a heavy fire, fearing that the French might immediately storm the town as he hurried to discover what had occurred. The exchange continued but the French noted that the Portuguese cannonade had slackened to be replaced largely with musketry as infantrymen fired on their trenches.

  Dawn revealed the extent of the disaster, with numerous fires burning in the town and the top storeys of nearly every building blown off. As Massena and his staff surveyed the damage by telescope Pelet recorded: ‘We could not see the tower, the church, or the castle. Everything appeared turned upside down.’128 Cox had hurried to the scene of the explosion that night, which had confirmed his worst fears. The garrison powder magazine, stored in the castle, had ignited, detonating 150,000 pounds of gunpowder and over a million musket cartridges. The castle had been destroyed down to its foundations along with the cathedral. The majority of the town was ruined with the roofs and upper storeys of most houses obliterated and the streets choked with rubble and bodies. About 600 infantry and 200 artillerymen had died in the explosion, along with 500 townsfolk. The governor had asked the townspeople to leave for the countryside shortly before the siege but around 1,000 had stayed.

  The exact cause of the disaster was never established, with no living witnesses of the ignition. Artillery officer João de Sousa guessed that a French shell had ignited a powder trail from a leaking barrel as gunners took gunpowder from the magazine to the walls. Either that or a lucky shot had sent a howitzer shell through the castle doors directly into the magazine itself. However, Cox later claimed that the castle doors were always kept closed and were too thick for a shell to penetrate. Regardless of the truth of the matter, Cox realised that although the outer defences were largely untouched, with only thirty-nine barrels of powder remaining to him further defence was untenable.

  Massena ordered a ceasefire and sent a party of officers to offer terms to Colonel Cox. Only Pelet and Captain Gama (a Portuguese officer in French service) were allowed to enter Almeida. Despite being blindfolded whilst being led to the governor, they saw enough to be shocked at the extent of the destruction within the town. The governor was well aware that the fortress was indefensible, but thought that he could hold out for a few days in the hope of a relief attempt by Wellington, who was only a day’s march away. At a council of war with his officers Cox was dismayed at their eagerness to surrender with even his Lieutenant-Governor, Colonel Francisco da Costa, arguing for a rapid capitulation. The French offered reasonable terms, Massena’s dispatch reading:

  The town of Almeida is burning. All of my siege artillery is in its batteries, and it is impossible for your allies to come to your aid. Render yourself to the generosity of the armies of His Majesty, the Emperor and King.129

  To Pelet’s surprise, Cox refused, but permitted some of his officers to go to the French camp to continue negotiations. Whilst talks were in progress d’Alorna, accompanied by General Manuel Pamplona and other Portuguese officers, rode along the glacis shouting greetings to the Portuguese soldiers on the walls. To the surprise of many, including d’Alorna and his staff, he received a rapturous welcome, many of the garrison cheering: ‘Long live Marquis d’Alorna!’130 and openly conversing with men their Government had denounced as traitors. Some officers even came down into the ditch to talk openly with the renegades.

  Massena received Major Barreiros and Captain Mello behind the trench works and demanded the immediate surrender of the fortress. Initially playing for time as Cox had ordered, they requested that the garrison be permitted to march away under arms, but the marshal knew he had them at an enormous disadvantage and refused. However,though he realised that Cox was stalling, he did concede that the militia could return to their homes, but insisted that all regular troops would be taken prisoner. Mello returned to Almeida, but Barreiros signed the agreement and stayed in the French camp. Obstinate to the last, Cox refused to surrender and the bombardment began again. This time the cannonade inflicted more damage, with Barreiros treacherously directing French fire against his former comrades.

  Early on the morning of 28 August, Cox accepted the inevitable and surrendered the town. Many within the French army believed his defence had been a gallant one, as Marbot conceded:

  That brave officer, not suffering himself to be intimidated by the horrible disaster which had just destroyed all his means of resistance, proposed to the garrison to continue their defence behind the ruins of the city. But the Portuguese troops, terrified and led away by their officers, especially by Bernado Costa… and José Barreiros… refused, and Colonel Cox, being unsupported, was compelled to capitulate.131

  Almeida had fallen remarkably swiftly after eleven days of entrenchment and thirty hours of bombardment, but this was largely due to the Allies’ incredibly bad luck. The French set about the repair of the town, but the outer defences had sustained little damage, most of the destruction being internal. Some 172 guns had been captured, along with numerous small arms but even more significant was the amount of food in the garrison’s stores. Rations of 300,000 biscuit, 10,000lb of salted meat, twenty-four tons of wheat, 150 tons of straw and eighty tons of maize were amongst the spoils. This could have supplied the garrison for months and would be of enormous benefit to the French now that they were free to march into Portugal. Six colours had been taken from the Portuguese regiments and these flags were sent to Paris as trophies. Napoleon would be pleased at the victory as it meant the invasion was proceeding according to his timetable.

  The French had sustained
relatively few losses and had captured around 3,000 of the garrison, most of whom would be marching to Verdun as prisoners of war. However, to the disgust of Cox and the two other British officers with him, many of the Portuguese troops elected to serve with the French. They argued that the British had betrayed them and were heartened to see the return of d’Alorna, who promised to raise a regiment from these volunteers. Massena was reluctant to trust men who changed their allegiance so swiftly, but six officers and two hundred men, along with the entire 24th Regiment, were offering to swear an oath to the Emperor. When he authorised a unit of pioneers to be raised most of the 4th artillery and sixty of the 11th Cavalry also volunteered to serve under General Pamplona in Eblé’s command. The militia were marched across the Côa and permitted to leave. Sadly for the French, Massena’s suspicions were well founded and over the next few weeks they deserted in droves. Eventually so many absconded that Massena felt justified in disregarding the agreement and sent the remainder to France as prisoners. Men who had changed their allegiance once could never be trusted again and he cursed himself for squandering one of the fruits of his victory.

  Wellington was dismayed at the fall of Almeida. He had hoped it would hold out for at least ninety days and once again he received severe criticism for not attempting to relieve the town. The Regency were unhappy about Wellington’s strategy and Principal Sousa and the Patriarch argued that it would be better to oppose the enemy on the frontier rather than permit them to march into the hinterland and ravage central Portugal. They wished to replace many of Wellington’s appointees with men of their own and concentrate a defence around Oporto, which they assumed would be the first French objective, as it had been during the last invasion. This situation was not helped by officers in the British Army, who sympathised with Portuguese misgivings and were worried by the French superiority in numbers. Wellington admitted: ‘There is a system of croaking in the army, which is highly injurious to the public service, and which I must devise some means of putting an end to, or it will put an end to us.’132 Charles Stuart, Wellington’s political representative, argued continuously with Sousa over this matter and it was only resolved when Wellington threatened to resign and advise the British Government to withdraw from Portugal completely.

  Colonel Cox was also blamed for an overly swift capitulation, even when the full facts were known. It was argued that he was negligent for not attempting sorties to delay the French progress against Almeida, but this was unfair considering that the bulk of his troops were untested militia and he could ill afford to lose men. A more justified criticism was his reliance on a single magazine for the bulk of the garrison’s powder, though no one could have predicted that such a catastrophe would occur. Despite this Wellington eventually admitted: ‘I have no fault to find with that unfortunate event excepting that they did not inform me as they might by telegraph of the exact nature and extent of the misfortune which had happened, and did not give me the option of saving the garrison…’133 Furthermore, Cox had been betrayed by his officers and when Costa escaped from the French, Beresford had him imprisoned and later executed for cowardice on 22 August 1812.

  Massena had won valuable time for his invasion plan but, infuriatingly, the invasion could not proceed straight away. He was unwilling to advance without amassing sufficient supplies of food and powder for the army and these took time to bring up from Salamanca. Several convoys were badly cut up by guerrilla ambushes and, in some cases, destroyed or carried off, which lengthened the process even further. It was not until 15 September that the three corps had concentrated and began to march into inner Portugal. Sufficient provisions for two weeks had been gathered in Almeida, the minimum that Massena considered necessary for success.

  The army had lost nearly 2,000 men in the two sieges, along with 1,500 horses. As many as 6,000 men were sick and, though disease was always present in the army, the time spent in the trench works had increased their numbers. Marbot had only recently recovered from a severe fever and rejoined the staff at Fort Concepción. His growing dislike of Massena was strengthened by his failure to enquire after his health, and Marbot’s scathing remarks about this stage of the campaign are no doubt coloured by this. French cavalry scouts brought back news that the Allies were falling back before them and Massena determined to march on Lisbon via the city of Coimbra in central Portugal. The British expected the French to take the more southerly route through the valley of the Mondego River, where the roads were adequate by Portuguese standards. However, Massena eventually chose a north-western route into the mountains of Viseu. Wellington was baffled, speculating over Massena’s intent with French cavalry spreading out in several directions in order to conceal the army’s destination for as long as possible. Indeed, initial scouting reports suggested that Massena might march in a totally different direction:

  Massena seems to be acting with extreme caution, leaving nothing to chance – Ciudad Rodrigo in his possession likewise Almeida, instead of making an immediate embarkation into Portugal he seems to meditate an attack on Badajoz the fall of which would give him the frontier from Galicia to the Guadiana…134

  The fall of Badajoz would indeed improve the French position and make their rear more secure, and would allow the possibility of two simultaneous invasions from the north and the south that would be difficult to counter. This theory was given greater credence by the defeat of Spanish General Romana on 15 September, who lost 500 men and six cannons in an ill-advised foray in the south. He was only extricated by the fortuitous arrival of Madden’s Portuguese cavalry and was forced to retire on Badajoz. The French did hope to move against the city, but Massena had reason to believe that Marshal Soult’s army would besiege Badajoz in his stead and he had no wish to share the glory when Lisbon fell.

  Only by 17 September did it become clear to a delighted Wellington that the French were pursuing the northern route, containing some of the worst roads in the country. Marbot commented caustically:

  One need only look at the map to see how unreasonable it was to go by Viseu on the way from Celorico to Coimbra; a mistake all the greater from the fact that Viseu is separated from the Sierra d’Alcoba by high hills, which the army might have avoided by marching down the valley of the Mondego. The neighbourhood of Viseu produces no corn or vegetables, and the troops found nothing there but lemons and grapes – not very sustaining food.135

  However, Marbot was forced to concede that the maps in French possession were extremely poor and misleading. Furthermore the Anfranceados riding with them proved to be of less use than expected with their lack of local intelligence. Most of the exiles serving with Massena hailed from the Lisbon region and their geographical knowledge extended little beyond its peninsula. They covered their ignorance with bombast, Pelet recalling:

  The misfortune was that none of these self-styled strategists had gone over the ground they were describing, and they could not answer the only thing we asked them. ‘Can a carriage go on this road? Is this river deep? Is this range of mountains impracticable?’136

  In any case the Portuguese had never made much effort to map their country adequately and, with so little trade with Spain, central Portugal was rarely visited by those living in the coastal regions. French officers who had participated in the last two invasions were little help, not having campaigned within these provinces. Pelet also regretted the lack of topographical intelligence and did his best to ensure that extensive reconnaissance partially countered this dilemma. After the campaign he was furious to discover that far better maps were available in Paris that had not been provided for the expedition.137 Consequently, Massena was forced to rely almost solely on his own efforts to scout the region.

  Just why Massena opted for the northern route is debatable. Had he followed the Allied line of retreat he would have been obliged to fight on ground of their choosing should they decide to oppose his advance. Aware of the Allied plan to destroy Portuguese resources, he may have believed that the lands to the north would yield better supplies.
Furthermore, the French army was renowned for its swift marching capability and, though the northerly route was at least ten miles longer than the road the Allies were taking, he may have hoped to overtake them. This could have enabled him to fall on the flank of any defensive position they had prepared, or even cut off their line of retreat from the capital. This would have been a masterstroke if it could have been achieved, but if this was indeed his plan he was confounded by the dreadful state of the roads in the area, most being little more than unpaved country tracks.

  As the Allied army retreated it began to enforce the ruthless ‘scorched earth’ policy that Wellington had agreed with the Regency. British and Portuguese troops hurried the people on their way and if any refused it was not unusual for a few summary examples to be made, the French discovering men hanged or shot by the roadside. Observing the suffering of the peasantry, William Warre of Beresford’s staff was sympathetic to their plight:

  It was most distressing to see them abandoning their habitations, and flying away from the miscreants, loaded with what little property they could carry away, crying and lamenting, followed by their helpless children, while the men drove away their cattle, and all uncertain where they might find a place of safety.138

  All forms of shelter were burnt in the wake of the retreating army. Storehouses and granaries were emptied and cattle were driven off or killed. Although compliance with government orders was far from universal, Massena’s army found little in the way of provisions and the countryside was largely deserted. They were marching into a man-made wasteland. If this were not bad enough, the Ordenanza were becoming bolder and more effective, especially under the leadership of regular officers such as Colonel Sir Nicolas Trant. The French artillery practically had to reconstruct large sections of roadway to allow the passage of their guns and, when Trant’s force attacked the reserve artillery park strung out along the narrow lanes, they nearly met with disaster. Only the inexperience of his levies prevented him from tipping the guns down the hillside and destroying them when they fled at the approach of their escort.139 Nevertheless, they inflicted some damage but the loss of this significant part of the artillery and a considerable portion of the army’s baggage with the convoy could have forced Massena to fall back on Almeida. Progress was slow and Massena wrote to Berthier complaining how the terrible state of the roads slowed his march. The artillery suffered in particular. Colonel Jean-Nicolas Noël of VIII Corps recorded how difficult it was to drag guns over such terrain: