Commissary Schaumann was engaged in a constant struggle to move his supply wagons along the country tracks. Many of these contained wounded, whose sufferings were terrible as they were jolted along the rough highways. He witnessed harrowing scenes as long lines of civilians trailed alongside the army on the way to the capital. The roads were clogged with refugees, poorly clad and with few possessions, all hurrying to reach safety. ‘Their flight was carried out partly in pursuance of orders, and partly from instinct; for they knew the French and their lust for murder and plunder, and were only too familiar with the ill treatment that awaited them.’164 Schaumann saw old folk knocked down and trampled on the road, amongst other terrible sights. Many were angry, misunderstanding why the Allies retreated after a victory, and they doubted whether the British would stay to defend Lisbon.
Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington. Very much a man of his class and arguably the finest general that Britain ever produced.
Marshal André Massena. He rose from the rank of private in the French Army to eventually rival the Emperor himself as a general. Maurier
The Convent at Mafra where General Junot established his headquarters during the First Invasion of Portugal 1807–1808.
A typical view of the border region showing the mountainous and poorly tracked terrain that hindered the march of Napoleonic armies.
The western side of the Spanish fortress Ciudad Rodrigo with the cathedral in the background.
Another view of Ciudad Rodrigo’s impressive defences.
A French storming party ascends the breach at Ciudad Rodrigo just as Governor Herrasti surrenders the town. Philippoteaux
The gorge of the River Côa beyond Craufurd’s bridge. It was a difficult obstacle for troops without a crossing point, but virtually impassable for wagons and artillery.
The bridge over the River Côa where the end of Craufurd and Ney’s controversial frontier action was fought out.
The devastation of the land before the French was enforced ruthlessly by the Allies when the peasantry resisted. Raffet
Below & opposite page: The people’s fanatical resistance in Iberia led to a continuous cycle of atrocity and reprisal during the French occupation. Goya’s Disasters of War
With small parties always vulnerable to guerilla ambush, the French encountered immense difficulties in maintaining lines of communication. Philippoteaux
The gateway of São Francisco, the main entrance to the fortress town of Almeida.
Marshal Michel Ney. Although an excellent soldier, his constant clashes with Massena harmed French interests during the Third Invasion. Meissonier
Craufurd’s Rock, marking the point where the Light Division broke the back of Ney’s main attack above Sula village.
Portugal’s monument to the slain at Busaço, a highly significant battle in that nation’s military history.
Massena’s narrow escape while viewing the Lines of Torres Vedras, as a British round shot crashed through a wall beside him. Delort and Laplante
A typical small redoubt in the Lines of Torres Vedras near Alhandra. Though crumbling and overgrown, two gun embrasures are still visible.
Fort St. Julien, the stronghold that protected Wellington’s emergency embarkation point in the third defensive line.
The house where Wellington maintained his headquarters to monitor the Lines of Torres Vedras in the village of Pero Negro.
Napoleon footnoteened with increasing alarm and indignation as General Foy told him of Massena’s difficulties. Philippoteaux
A small footbridge over the Dos Casas at Fuentes de Oñoro. The picture is taken from the British side towards the French positions and the stream was totally dry in places.
The old village of Fuentes de Oñoro, viewed from the French side of the Dos Casas. It is still a warren of small lanes winding up the hillside towards Wellington’s central positions.
The church of Fuentes de Oñoro, which marked the furthest extent of the French attacks and was the scene of brutal hand-to-hand fighting.
Massena’s withdrawal from Portugal began a long series of retreats for the French, ending with their expulsion from the Peninsula.Barbant and Delort
Although the right flank was driven in, repeated French cavalry charges failed to break the British squares as Craufurd and Houston conducted a masterful retreat across the plain.
Chapter 7
Que Diable!
Massena hoped that Wellington would make a stand in the region of Coimbra, but the Allies retreated before him, the Anglo-Portuguese Army crossing the Mondego and heading south towards the capital. Many French officers were mystified by Wellington’s strategy, speaking contemptuously of his failure to support the border fortresses and unwillingness to meet them on equal terms. Though Busaço had been a disaster, the British had the enormous advantage of a strong defensive position, and yet they had refused to come down to fight them like men once the French onslaught was repulsed. They surmised that upon reaching Lisbon the enemy would have their backs to the sea and the matter would then be decided. The British would either stand and fight or take to the sea and flee to their island.
Sainte Croix’s cavalry harried the rearguard, but failed to prevent the British crossing the Mondego at Coimbra and destroying the bridge behind them. Junot’s Corps headed the advance and entered the town on 1 October. Most of its inhabitants had fled, yet some had tarried hoping that the French would be civilised conquerors. Pelet was approached by the town Governor who was:
…soon followed by a large number of inhabitants who had been outraged by the rigorous orders of the English and Portuguese generals, whose proclamations were still hanging on the walls, and frightened into hiding by the death penalty with which they had been threatened… In the streets we found a few bodies of people who were said to have been killed by military order before the departure of the troops. Most of the Portuguese complained bitterly about this loathsome tyranny and about having been chased from their homes.165
After constant warnings to destroy or carry their property away, the troops had followed their orders to the letter, and those that opposed them had suffered accordingly. It was a cruel policy, but already an effective one. However, many Portuguese were understandably reluctant to wreck their livelihoods and hid rather than destroyed supplies, to Wellington’s annoyance. Massena’s army contained many veteran campaigners, used to living off the land, who soon uncovered such hoards. In any case, there were considerable stocks of food in Coimbra’s warehouses that the Allies had not had the time to carry off or burn. Yet Junot’s men ravaged the town, looting anything of value, and those citizens who had remained regretted their decision as the soldiers tore through the streets. Massena was infuriated when he learnt of this, since the troops had carelessly fired food stocks and other supplies during the sacking of Coimbra. He gave Junot a severe reprimand and threatened to send him back to Paris if he could not maintain order in future.166 In spite of this, Massena decided to present Marshal Ney with an expensive telescope, plundered from Coimbra’s observatory, that had somehow come into his possession. Possibly he hoped this peace offering would help to resolve their differences, but it proved a poorly chosen gift. Ney returned it with a disdainful note saying that he was not in the habit of receiving stolen property.
Autumnal rains were now slowing the French advance. As they crossed the Mondego, militia and Ordenanza units closed in behind them, cutting off their communications with Spain. Almeida was already cut off by irregular troops under General Silveira who, though they lacked siege artillery to take the town, mounted an effective blockade. Militia units under officers such as Trant and John Wilson were ordered to harry foragers and intercept couriers as the French marched further into Portugal. In addition, Portuguese guerrillas, often little better than bandits, prowled the rural areas ambushing small parties of French soldiers and raiding their camps in the night.
Before leaving Coimbra, Massena had decided that only a small garrison was necessary for the town, knowing he w
ould need nearly every man to capture Lisbon. He also left at least 3,500 sick and wounded troops under their protection. On 7 October Trant entered the town with 4,000 militia, easily overpowering their guards. Though the bulk of the wounded were carried on wagons to Oporto, considerable numbers were massacred by the militia, who slaughtered them as they lay helpless in the hospitals. The loss of Coimbra put an end to Massena’s plan to use the town as a base to dominate central Portugal, but it was disastrous that the wounded had been left almost unprotected. When news reached the French ill feeling spread throughout the Army of Portugal at its commander’s carelessness. These men could have fought again and it was foolish to have left them with so few soldiers to guard them in hostile territory. With national feeling running so high in Iberia, the savage end that many of them suffered was predictable and could have been avoided.
On 11 October Montbrun’s cavalry found their way blocked by a range of hills surmounted by a line of fortifications. Montbrun reconnoitred the position in detail and reported to Massena that this chain of forts extended many miles. On 14 October, Massena rode to the front to see for himself and was appalled at the strength of the works lying before him. Redoubts and forts, close enough to support each other with artillery fire, extended for miles amid the broken hill country. The enemy had excavated the hillsides, increasing the gradients of ridges and clearing dead ground of any cover where attackers could take refuge after failed assaults. Many streams and watercourses had been dammed, adding flooded areas to impede attackers and numerous support trenches and long lines of wooden stakes, barriers and impediments made the prospect of enduring the fire of the forts and marching past them bleak.
Despite spending the last six months in Iberia, Massena had heard very little about the vast construction operations that the Allies must have conducted to create these fortifications. Furthermore, although the lack of information from military sources was understandable with the communication and intelligence gathering problems in the Peninsula, not a word had been received from French spies operating in Lisbon.167
Rounding on his Portuguese officers, Massena demanded to know why he had not been informed of the nature of the ground north of Lisbon, since most of the exiles came from the region and should have been familiar with its geography. General Pamplona recorded how the renegades protested that these works were as much of a surprise to them as they were to Massena. Surely he could not have expected them to predict that Wellington would go to such trouble in creating these works they argued. Infuriated, Massena snarled: ’Que diable! Wellington didn’t make these mountains!’168 He also held Junot accountable, since he had spent eight months in Lisbon and had marched over this ground during the Vimeiro campaign. Even without the fortifications surmounting them, the hills were a considerable obstacle and Massena should have received some warning of their presence.
Ordering an extensive reconnaissance, Massena personally inspected the lines, growing more and more despondent as he perceived their defensive capability. Resting his telescope on a farm wall he scanned one redoubt near Arruda for so long that the garrison fired a shot at the group of staff officers around him. The cannonball ploughed through the wall just as Massena was collapsing his scope and walking away, showering him with small fragments of stone. Turning, he raised his hat in acknowledgement of the gunner’s fine shot and continued his ride along the lines. He had reached an impasse and would have to consider his next move very carefully. He must have asked himself how Wellington had managed to throw up so well planned a defence in such a short period of time. The answer lay in the events of the preceding year.
Following Soult’s hurried retreat from Portugal, Wellington had put the breathing space the French had allowed him to good use. Knowing that the overwhelming number of enemy troops in Spain were almost insurmountable for a small army, he realised that the best chance for British success lay in outlasting the enemy. Spain was taking a long time to conquer and large French armies could only be assembled and maintained for a short period with the paucity of resources available there. Therefore, if he could fortify Portugal and provide himself with a secure base he had a good chance of surviving the third invasion and could continue to support his Spanish allies. Eventually he hoped to mount serious offensives into Spain. The problem lay in the fact that Portugal had one of the longest frontiers in Europe and could not be secured without massive expenditure. Such a project would also demand significant time; a luxury the French were unlikely to permit.
Wellington’s eventual solution was to mount a three tier defence of Portugal – to establish popular resistance with a ’levée en masse’ raising militias and Ordenanza, to devastate the land before the French advance and to fortify the capital. Wellington had determined that the border fortresses could only delay the French and placed his main hopes on the defence of Lisbon. To this end he began the construction of a series of fortified lines that would totally cut off Lisbon’s peninsula from the Atlantic to the Tagus estuary, denying the French the option of marching around them and forcing them to either attack or mount a siege. He eventually decided that two major lines of fortifications were necessary, with a far smaller third line designed to protect an emergency embarkation point.
Wellington had decided on this course as early as October 1809 and subsequently instructed his engineers to survey the areas in question. It was a mammoth undertaking and many doubted that it could be achieved in the time allowed. Their chances were not improved by the lack of trained engineer officers present in the army, a circumstance that was to hinder Allied operations throughout the war. Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Richard Fletcher of the Royal Engineers was given overall command of the operation, but he had only seventeen engineer officers to assist him in supervising the work, eleven being British, four Portuguese and two from the King’s German Legion in British service. 10,000 Portuguese civilian workers were hired for the task of constructing the lines. They received only six vintems a day, which rose to ten when the work became full-time.
The lines were not designed as a continuous wall, but as a series of linked strong points of various sizes capable of mutual fire support. Many were small redoubts with only four guns, but larger fortresses were constructed at likely attack points such as the towns of Torres Vedras and Alhandra. These larger fortifications often possessed a glacis, ditch and embrasured gun ports. They were provided with bombproof shelters for their garrisons and strong parapets surmounted the walls, allowing infantry to fire over them. Wellington had decided to man the lines largely with militia and therefore provided inner defences such as internal ditches, primarily to bolster morale: ‘…these interior defences and retrenchments were intended to guard against a general panic amongst the garrison, which would necessarily be composed in part of indifferent troops, and also to prevent the loss of the work by the entry of assailants at any weak or ill-defended point.’169 It was hoped that cannon fire alone would be sufficient to repel assaults but, in the case of enemy troops getting close enough to enter such works, the capability of the militia putting up stout resistance was uncertain.
Small windmills were commonplace in Portugal and were often adapted as inner fortifications, proving admirably suited to the task.The forward line ran a full twenty-nine miles from the Atlantic to the town of Alhandra and consisted of thirty-two redoubts mounting 158 guns. The majority of these strong points were small redoubts that made full use of the existing natural hill barrier. However, though many looked imposing when situated on the crests and summits of hills, this could restrict the forts’ potential firepower, since their height would require such ‘plunging fire’ to reach certain areas that it would reduce the effect of musketry and cannon shot. Upon discovering this, redoubts were placed with greater care, but the existing high locations of many forts were felt to bolster the morale of their garrisons and they were retained.170
It was also considered unnecessary to follow the traditional star shape favoured by eighteenth-century designers due to the small size of most red
oubts: ‘…this construction was latterly rejected, it being found to cut up the interior space, and to be almost fallacious with respect to flank defence, the breadth of the exterior slopes being in some cases equal to the whole length of the flanks to be obtained…’171 With many forts situated on steep heights, this alone made them difficult for enemy gunners to obtain the necessary elevation to fire upon them directly. Furthermore, supporting ditches, flèches and abbatis172 were considered sufficient protection against infantry attacks.
Yet even this was deemed insufficient and Wellington’s engineers decided to improve upon the natural hillsides by steepening the slopes, blasting or digging away the hillsides with manual labour. These escarpments made the slopes extremely difficult for infantry to climb in places though:
It never was presumed that scarps could be trusted to without defenders; but it was considered a great point gained to have rendered portions of ground of such difficult access as to be safely left to the guard of a small corps, or to unsteady troops, such as militia and ordinanza (sic)… 173
As a further improvement, all cover was removed or cut away for several hundred yards in front of the lines, including forestry and olive groves. If a French assault failed, the troops would be denied a place to rally and re-form, and the artillery would have a clear line of fire to press their retreat.
Communication along the lines was essential and a military road was cut into the reverse slopes of the hillsides to allow troops to reinforce threatened sectors and provide easier access for the supply of food and ammunition. The Junta de Viveres had been established as a commissariat for the Portuguese forces who comprised the bulk of the line’s garrisons. The British Government paid for about half of the supplies, but the junta proved inept in their task, often requisitioning rather than buying local corn and failing to ensure its proper transportation.174 Wellington knew that one of the main risks of manning the lines was keeping the troops well provisioned and feared sickness and desertion as much as enemy assaults. It proved a constant struggle to maintain the flow of resources over such a large area and the military road was a sound investment. In addition a telegraph was installed along the line to give early warning of enemy attack. This was a variant of the semaphore system, comprising three masts with movable arms and flags. It relied on line of sight, but given clear weather conditions a message could be sent over the twenty-nine miles of the forward line in under seven minutes.
Wellington Against Massena Page 16