Wellington Against Massena

by David Buttery

  French activity had escalated, with large amounts of supplies being carried into Ciudad Rodrigo and Marshal Massena preparing his headquarters in the town. The actions of the Spanish guerrillas had not been up to their usual standard, with several supply convoys reaching there with little difficulty. This may have been due in part to the reduced assistance from the Light Division.

  Wellington guessed that Massena’s objective was Almeida, but believed that he could hold the town. Though he could withdraw and hope that the dearth of supplies would drive the French back once more, he was not prepared to allow the French to remain in Portugal. The main problem with Almeida from the perspective of defending Portugal was that it lay on the eastern bank of the Côa. If Wellington withdrew over the river the French were likely to increase its garrison and a few months might see them strong enough to base their army in the region and, protected by the Côa’s gorge, it would become a staging area for another invasion. The Portuguese had been invaded three times in three years, but with their lands ravaged and the people sick of war, Wellington must have doubted their resolve to continue resistance. He wished to take the conflict over the border into Spain, not repeat the dark days of 1810, and was determined to block Massena’s march and give battle. The Allies had between 30,000 and 37,000 men, but the Portuguese regiments were malnourished and suffering from sickness and desertion due to the Regency’s supply mismanagement. He outgunned Massena’s force with forty-eight cannon to the French thirty-eight, but was inferior in cavalry having only 1,800 against 4,500 French horse. Notwithstanding, he was confident of success, writing to Lord Liverpool on 1 May:

  The enemy may be stronger than they were when they were obliged to evacuate Portugal, and they may have been reinforced by detachments of troops under the command of Marshal Bessières; but I still feel confident that they have it not in their power to defeat the allied army in a general action.228

  One reason for confidence was that he was able to choose his own ground for this battle. Knowing the route the French would be obliged to take for Almeida, he selected a ridge on the edge of the plains of Leon as a defensive position. The ridge lay between the two rivulets, the Dos Casas and the Turones, and grew progressively steeper towards the north. The Dos Casas widened to the north and was a difficult obstacle, having steeper banks and being strewn with rocks further upstream. Wellington placed the 5th and 6th Divisions along this line, anchoring his left on the ruined fortress of La Concepcion.

  The village of Fuentes de Oñoro lay on his right. Comprising rugged granite-built cottages, it was low lying and rose up the hillside in tiers, the church being the largest and highest building in the hamlet. The Dos Casas was narrow and shallow at this point and did not present much of an obstacle, but the confused warren of small houses and walled gardens was certainly defensible if exposed to artillery fire. Here Wellington stationed twenty-eight light companies drawn from the 1 and 3 Divisions including British, Portuguese and King’s German Legion troops, their combined strength amounting to around 1,800 men. These were under the command of Colonel Williams, who also had a full battalion of the 83rd in support.

  Behind and to the left of the village were the 1st, 3rd and 7th Divisions. The Light Division lay in reserve along with the 1 and 2 Cavalry Brigades under Major-General Slade and Lieutenant-Colonel Von Arentschildt (KGL). South of Fuentes de Oñoro, the land was considerably flatter and more open, though broken with woods and marshland in places. Wellington predicted that the village would become the focal point of the battle, but nevertheless posted Julian Sanchez’s irregulars, both infantry and cavalry, to the south in the village of Nave de Haver and a small British detachment in the village of Pço Velho. He did not expect a serious attack on this flank, but felt it prudent to take precautions. The Allied line was roughly eight miles long.

  Five miles in the Allied rear lay the chasm of the River Côa, if anything deeper at this point than to the north, where Craufurd had fought his rearguard action the previous year. In the event of being forced to withdraw, various fords and the bridge at Castello Bom were the only viable crossing points unless the force retreated north-west to the bridge at Almeida. Although the fortresses’ guns did not cover the bridge, the move would involve a considerable detour over difficult ground, with the grave possibility of interference from the garrison as the forces masking it would also be forced to retire. Massena was aware of this and, though he acknowledged the strength of the Allied position, recorded: ‘Yet this position of the enemy was not without danger to them, since they had behind their front the rocky bed of the Coa, and but a single carriage communication, sufficiently difficult, by Castel Bom.’229 It was a risk to have such a serious obstacle in the army’s rear, but Wellington thought his position sufficiently strong to make retreat unlikely.

  The French moved west from Ciudad Rodrigo on 2 May on two parallel roads. Allied cavalry scouts soon detected their manoeuvring and several small clashes occurred as they fell back towards Wellington’s position. Massena began to scout the enemy position on the afternoon of the 2nd. This time he intended to proceed cautiously after his previous underestimation of Wellington’s ability and the strength of Busço Ridge the year before. He determined that the village was the key to the Allied position and later wrote: ‘This village is hidden by the nature of the ground, and placed in part on the foot of the little hill which the enemy possessed. I hoped to carry it, and keep it…230 To the north he deemed the land too rugged and difficult for a successful attack, but if he could occupy the enemy there, a large attack on Fuentes de Oñoro might break the Allied line and an advance along the ridge. He deployed Reynier’s II Corps to the north, aiming to engage the British 5th Division with: ‘…orders to favour, by petty attacks, the grand movement of the army, and to manoeuvre in such a manner as to unite with it in proportion as it gained ground upon the enemy.’231 Simultaneously, Ferey’s Division from Loison’s VI Corps would assault the village. He concentrated the bulk of his forces before Fuentes de Onoro, including IX Corps under D’Erlon, and held his cavalry under Montbrun and Fournier in reserve. Junot’s VIII Corps was also placed before the village, but further to the right, where they were close enough to march in support of Reynier should it become necessary.

  The French army was in good spirits. Charles Parquin, a second Lieutenant in the 20th Chasseurs, recalled: ‘…everyone was eager to come to grips with the English.’232 Parquin was a relative newcomer, having recently ridden to join Montbrun’s Cavalry Division. However, Massena’s popularity had waned after the horrors of the retreat, Parquin revealing one source of discontent: ‘Unfortunately for the army Marshal Ney, le Brave des braves, was no longer there… a difference with the Prince of Essling had deprived the army of his talents and his sword.’233 They were eager to avenge their humiliations at the hands of the British, but Parquin was not the only one to remark that the great cavalry leader’s absence weakened their army.

  The battle began on 3 May as Reynier began to probe the extreme left of the Allied position. Wellington suspected that this attack might be only a feint, but was sufficiently concerned to order his reserves to march in support of the 5 Division. The Light Division arrived to find some large-scale skirmishing in progress across the Dos Casas, but found their support unnecessary. Meanwhile, Ferey sent ten battalions across the stream to storm the village. Though the streams were at a high-water mark during this season, the Dos Casas was rarely more than a couple of feet deep before the village and the infantry splashed across it with ease though under heavy fire. Light infantrymen fired from the houses and over walls at the oncoming French and lined up across the narrow village lanes to block their progress. Yet firepower alone was insufficient to stop the onslaught as they struggled up the slope through the tangle of walls and gardens and the action turned into a brutal hand-to-hand struggle.

  The light companies fought hard in the narrow streets, but the numbers sent against them were overwhelming and the French determinedly pushed them back up the hillsi
de towards the village church. Here Colonel Williams mounted a counter-attack with his reserves that drove them back almost to the Dos Casas. Ferey then committed his second brigade, attacking at two separate points. Williams was severely wounded and the light infantry were again driven back through the village. Richard Brunton was among the hard-pressed troops. Since the action on the Côa he had been promoted and transferred into the 6th Caçadores under Colonel Pinto. His company: ‘…were hotly engaged disputing its possession from 12 o’clock until it became nearly dark, when the 71st and 79th came up to our support and very opportunely, for we were completely exhausted and the enemy constantly reinforced…’234

  At one point the red-coated Hanoverian Legion, in French service, advanced upwards through the village and were mistaken by their garb for a British unit. It was only when they formed a firing line and fired a volley into the British before them that the error was discovered. However, as the fight began to go against them they were fired upon by the French 66th Line and also by their own artillery as they fell back through the streets, these blunders possibly costing the French the action.235

  Observing that the fight was going badly and that the Allies were about to be forced out of the village, Wellington committed two Highland regiments to reinforce Williams and they mounted a determined bayonet charge down the hillside and into the village. One soldier of the 71st remembered Colonel Cadogan addressing the men as they prepared to move down the hillside:

  ’My lads, you have had no provision these two days; there is plenty in the hollow in front, let us go down and divide it.’ We advanced as quick as we could run and met the light companies retreating as fast as they could… they called to us, ‘Seventy-first, you will come back quicker than you advance.’ We soon came full in front of the enemy. The Colonel cries, ‘Here is food, my lads, cut away.’236

  It was rare for Wellington to order fighting in built up areas and unusual that bayonet clashes were contested so long. In the tortuous lanes of the village the two sides came upon each other at short range and, after a brief exchange of fire, had no time to reload before they were upon one another with sword and bayonet. Usually such affairs would be short lived, and often the psychological threat of the bayonet alone was enough to make one side break and run, but here both sides stood and fought with steel and musket butts. Harry Smith witnessed the charge from outside the village and remarked on the number of French officers he saw struck down, leading a column up the hill along with scores of men on both sides. Despite Smith’s extensive military experience, it was: ‘…the only real bayonet conflict I ever witnessed.237’

  Along the lanes and in the houses, groups of men lunged at each other and fired at point-blank range as the Scots forced the French back through the hamlet. One anonymous soldier’s account conveys something of the savagery of the fray:

  In this affair my life was most wonderfully preserved… a bayonet went through between my side and clothes, to my knapsack, which stopped its progress. The Frenchman to whom the bayonet belonged fell, pierced by a musket ball from my rear-rank man. Whilst freeing myself from the bayonet, a ball took off my right shoulder wing and killed my rear-rank man, who fell upon me. Narrow as this escape was, I felt no uneasiness; I was become so inured to danger and fatigue.238

  The streets had become choked with bodies and the wounded grasped at him as he stood over them and fired at the enemy, begging for assistance. Unable to help them, he recalled trampling over the dead and wounded as the 71st and 79th pursued the French over the Dos Casas. They chased them further, but French cavalry checked their advance and they were forced to retire in some haste.239 Four more battalions from Marchand’s Division were now sent against Fuentes de Oñoro, but the Scots resisted fiercely and held the line of the stream. According to Allied sources, the French were only able to recapture a few houses on the eastern bank, but Massena’s account differs. He claims that after desperate attempts to oust his men: ‘…the greater part of the village remained in our hands during the night.’240 Had this been true, the French would almost certainly have attacked in force the next morning to try to break the Allied line above Fuentes. Nevertheless, desultory firing continued into the night, but the fight for the village was over for the present.

  On the following day some skirmishing took place across the Dos Casas in the early morning, but the fighting soon died away as a truce was agreed at 10 o’clock to retrieve the wounded in the village. VI Corps had suffered at least 650 casualties the previous day and both sides entered the village to clear the streets of the dead and wounded lying heaped in the alleys and gardens.

  Massena realised that he had underestimated the strength of the village and that another frontal attack, unless combined with and supported by another manoeuvre, stood little chance of success. Sending out his cavalry, he spent the rest of the day scouting and searching for weaknesses in the Allied defences. If Napoleon had been in command, it is unlikely that he would have acted in such a patient and methodical manner. Ever impatient, he would never have given an enemy a day to prepare for his next assault unless presented with no choice but to do so. His tactical doctrine relied on speed and surprise, with a willingness to gamble against the odds if necessary. In contrast, Massena was cautious and prudent and, knowing the calibre of his opponent, refused to take risks. At Zurich he had waited an entire month for an opportune moment to strike. He believed the key to defeating Wellington was to outwait him, and the delay of a single day was insignificant if it might lead to victory.

  Montbrun’s cavalry reconnaissance swiftly determined that the Allied right was held by relatively few troops and that the bulk of those present were irregulars who were unlikely to put up serious resistance in a major engagement. Furthermore, the ground there was open and favourable for cavalry action, conveying little advantage to a defender. Massena had discovered Wellington’s weakness; his right was thinly held and could be turned. He later wrote: ‘I reconnoitred carefully the flank of the enemy… I found an accessible ground between Nave D’Aver and Posobello, and I resolved to direct the army thither. The orders were sent off in the evening, and the movements were executed during the night.’241 Reynier would make a similar demonstration on the Allied left, as before with the intention of drawing the enemy reserves to that sector. Ferey’s Division would remain poised before the village with IX Corps drawn up in its rear in two widely-spaced lines. This was intended to mask the fact that the rest of VI Corps were no longer positioned behind them.

  The bulk of the French cavalry, upwards of 3,500 men, was to attack on the British right at the village of Nave de Haver and continue their attack toward Poço Velho. This attack was to be supported by three infantry divisions from VI Corps and VIII Corps, comprising about 17,000 men. The rest of the French army was deployed in front of the village as before, where a second assault would be mounted in conjunction with this flanking attack on Wellington’s right. If the Allied flank could be successfully turned it would place their line of retreat to the fords and bridge at Castello Bom in severe jeopardy. If they were cut off, the Anglo-Portuguese Army would have grave difficulty in crossing the gorge of the Côa and the single bridge near Almeida would not be enough for the entire force to cross in a hurry. Furthermore, a successful attack on the village, with the divisions behind it weakened through supporting the Allied flanks, stood a chance of breaking the enemy centre. If Massena’s plan succeeded, Wellington would be forced into a difficult retreat towards Almeida that might end in disaster for the Allies and a conclusive French victory

  Although the French moves had been conducted in darkness to conceal their intentions, Wellington had spent the day riding from one vantage point to another observing enemy movements. In addition, his cavalry had been actively probing and monitoring the enemy positions and he had noticed patrols to the south which led him to suspect that Massena intended some sort of move there. During the day he had withdrawn most of the exhausted light companies from Fuentes de Oñoro and replaced them with battalio
ns from the 71st, 79th and 24th. Another attack on the village was anticipated and Grattan recalled:

  On our side we were not inactive: the avenues leading to Pozobello and Fuentes were barricaded in the best manner the movement would allow; temporary defences were constructed at the heads of the different streets, and trenches dug here and there as a protection against the impetuous attacks expected from the cavalry of General Montbrun.242

  Indeed, Wellington appears to have been more concerned about renewed attempts on Fuentes de Oñoro attempting to split his army in two than any attempt on his flanks. Craufurd now returned to considerable acclaim from his troops:

  …General Craufurd made his reappearance amongst us from England (4 May), and was welcomed with much enthusiasm by the division; although a strict disciplinarian, the men knew his value in the field too well not to testify their satisfaction at his return. The Caçadores, particularly, caused much laughter among us by shouting out in Portuguese… ‘Long live General Craufurd, who takes care of our bellies!’243

  Although still held in poor esteem by many of his officers, it was acknowledged that Craufurd’s handling of his Division was far more capable than that of Erskine, who now returned to command the 5th Division. Once again, the Light Division was held in reserve behind the Allied centre.

  Yet Wellington had some concern about his right wing and sent two squadrons of cavalry to Nave de Haver and placed the 7th Division in and behind the village of Poço Velho. He later wrote that he:

  …imagined that the enemy would endeavour to obtain possession of Fuentes de Oñoro and of the ground occupied by the troops behind the village, by crossing the Dos Casas at Poco Velho (about two miles to the south of Fuentes); and in the evening I moved the 7th Division, under Major-General Houston, to the right, in order, if possible, to protect that passage.244