Years of Victory 1802 - 1812

by Arthur Bryant

  Such troops and their fellow light-infantrymen of Edward Paget's Rearguard developed as the retreat went on an immense pride in their powers of endurance. At night they lay down, as 19 year-old Lieutenant Blakeney wrote, in martial wedlock, each folding to his breast his better half—his musket. For the stragglers and weaklings littering the way they felt nothing but contempt: clodhoppers they called them. At every village along the line of retreat the angry shout would go up: "Burst open the door!" and the laggards would be frog-marched into the street and set marching with kicks and blows. "Now show yer nerve," cried the sergeant of the 43rd, throttling his own racking cough; "if you die to-day, you won't have to die to-morrow. Fall in!"

  1 Journal of a Soldier, 64; Harris, 123. See also Leith Hay, I, 112; Schaumann, 119.

  At Lugo on January 6th Moore halted his army and prepared to give battle. Despite the wet and dreadful cold the effect on discipline was instantaneous. The men asked only one thing: to be allowed to visit their sufferings and injured self-respect on the enemy. For two days they bivouacked on an icy ridge without shelter and with scarcely any food, hoping against hope that the French would attack.1 On the third day, as the enemy made no sign and the last provisions were exhausted, the retreat was resumed in a terrible night of sleet and hail. Two more days of suffering and demoralisation followed, during which the French captured another five hundred footsore, starving laggards, though only after the latter, forming square under the orders of a sergeant, had put up a desperate fight. By the second night the march had become not a succession of battalions but a vast, disorganised multitude without respect of regiment, brigade or division; the colours of that famous corps, the Royals, were attended by nine officers, three sergeants and only three privates. During this time the Rearguard repeatedly saved the army.

  In the course of January 10th the hills were left behind and the main body reached Betanzos on the coastal plain. Here the sun was shining and the orange and lemon trees were in flower; there was ample provision of food, and the famished troops were able to fill their stomachs.2 Next day, with indescribable feelings, they caught their first glimpse of the sea and the distant masts of ships. A thorough reorganisation having taken place under the supervision of the Commander-in-Chief, the army entered Corunna that night in tolerable formation, the ragged, shoeless scarecrows stumping on frostbitten, bleeding feet through the streets with every commanding officer leading his regiment and every captain and subaltern flanking his section. The high light was the performance of two battalions of the First Foot Guards, each 800 strong, who marched in perfect formation in column of sections, with drums beating and the drum-major twirling his staff.

  Before the retreat Moore had urged the Government to send transports to Corunna or Vigo—a summons which had caused great indignation among the more sanguine Ministers.3 But not till the night of January 3rd~4th, during the midnight halt at Herrerias

  1 "I can never look back," wrote Captain Leith Hay, "to the scenes in front of Lugo without a feeling of regret that the battle was not there fought, nor ever bring to recollection the gallant bearing of the troops under all their miseries without admiration." —Leith Hay, I, 115. See also Boothby, 206; Journal of a Soldier, 68-9; Lynedoch, 294-5; Blakeney, 86-7.

  2 Though not without disastrous results; several men died on the spot and others went mad."—Schaumann, 130.

  3"O! that we had an enterprising general with a reputation to make instead of one to save"—Canning to Bathurst, 9th Jan., 1809. H. M. C. Bathurst, 84.

  after the action on the Cua, had he decided, on receiving his engineers' reports, to embark the main army at Corunna. When, therefore, it arrived, though the bay was filled with hospital and store ships, the transports were still wind-bound at Vigo. There was nothing for it but to wait for them and trust to their coming before Soult, who had lost a day or two on the march, could bring up his reserves and heavy guns. .

  Nor had the General been well served by his engineers. Corunna was protected on the south by a range of heights. But, like those at Toulon fifteen years before, they were too extensive for the army to hold. Sickness, the detachment of Craufurd's contingent to Vigo and heavy losses on the retreat—at least 5000 had fallen or had been captured—had reduced Moore's infantry to a bare 15,000.! The only position on which so small a force could fight a delaying action was an inner ring of low hills completely dominated by the outer heights. Moreover embarkation presented grave risks, since it was almost impossible to get out of the harbour in certain winds. "Figure to yourself," wrote a naval officer, "two or three hundred sail of bad-sailing merchantmen, crammed chock full, and a French army at hand who, possessing themselves of the place, would be enabled from both sides of the entrance to throw shot and shells at leisure at the unhappy transports attempting to work out. Such a situation makes me shudder!"* To make matters worse, until the transports should arrive, there was a serious shortage of food; on the day the British marched into the town every provision shop closed its doors.

  Therefore, though the soldiers rejoiced at the end of their sufferings and a happy commissary sat over Don Mascosa's mulled wine, smoking cigars and admiring the beauties of the harbour, those charged with the army's safety continued deeply anxious. Some even urged the Commander-in-Chief to ask Soult for a negotiated evacuation—a kind of Cintra Convention in reverse. But Moore rejected this humiliating proposal and proceeded with his usual energy to make the best of the situation. He at once embarked as many of his sick and wounded as possible in the store and hospital ships and began to fortify the landward approaches to the town. In this he was aided by the townsfolk, who, regardless of their own bleak future, threw themselves, men, women and children, with whole-hearted abandon into digging trenches, strengthening the neglected ramparts and carrying ammunition to the forts and batteries.3 It was as though, touched by the sufferings of their allies,

  1 Oman, I, 502.

  2 Paget Brothers, 110.

  3Schaumann, 134-5, 137; Blakeney, 112; Napier, T, 489.

  they had resolved by a single impulse to make amends for all the improvidence and procrastination of the past six months. Among the consequences of the latter was a huge magazine of four thousand barrels of powder, sent out in haste from England at the beginning of the war and since left undistributed and unused. This was fired on the 13th, causing an explosion which broke every window in the town, swept the harbour with a tidal wave and killed a sergeant and two men on piquet more than a mile away.

  Moore did not destroy everything that he found at Corunna. From the stores he took arms and ammunition, giving to every man a new firelock and a pouch filled with fresh powder—a valuable exercise of sea power, for the French, with the long mountain road behind them and their powder and arms damaged by exposure, could hope for no such advantage. And Moore needed all the help he could get. The Rearguard after its superb performance during the retreat—in which, though continuously engaged, it had lost fewer men than any division in the army—was holding the crossing over the Mero at El Burgo, four miles cast of the town. But, with the enemy massing beyond the river, the position ceased to be tenable after the 13th when a partially masked battery was disclosed commanding the broken bridge. General Paget's small force had no alternative but to withdraw in haste, leaving the French free to cross. A battle under the walls of Corunna could no longer be avoided.

  Fortunately on the evening of the 14th the missing transports arrived, no sail strong, bringing the total at anchor in the harbour to 250. With them came a squadron of battleships— Ville de Paris, Victory, Barfleur, Zealous, Implacable, Elizabeth, Norge, Plantagenet, Resolution, Audacious, Endymion, Mediator—-a glorious spectacle, thought an onlooker, had it been possible to forget the service for which they had come. Yet it was one which brought relief to thousands of British hearts. That night Moore, not daring to waste an hour lest a sudden change in the wind should enable the French artillery to destroy the fleet at anchor, embarked the remainder of his sick, all but eight of his guns and, since
the rocky terrain did not admit their of use in battle, the whole of his cavalry. Only a thousand horses could be taken. The remainder, having foundered during the retreat—not for want of shoes but for nails and hammers —were shot on the beach.

  During the morning of the 15th Soult, forcing back Paget's outposts, occupied the heights round the town, overlooking and partially enclosing the inferior British positions on the slopes of Monte Mero. Sharpshooting and cannonading continued all day,

  287

  about a hundred men falling on either side. Sir John Moore spent the afternoon inspecting his lines, talking as usual to every officer and giving cautions, orders and exhortations. " He looked wistfully at the enemy," wrote young Boothby who rode with his Staff, "apparently wishing with painful eagerness for a battle." Those, Boothby added, who supposed that such wishes were excited by any thought of his own fame did not know Sir John Moore; only that morning in a letter to the Admiral, he had expressed his anxiety for an engagement as the only means of securing an unmolested embarkation.

  Yet possibly another—and not ignoble—thought was in Moore's mind. In his last dispatch, sent off two days earlier, he had told Castlereagh that he could never have believed that a British army could become demoralised in so short a time; its conduct in retreat had been infamous beyond belief. Yet he could not refrain from also stressing his unbroken confidence in the valour of his troops; whenever there had been any prospect of fighting, the men had shown their determination to do their duty. In a retreat of nearly three hundred miles,1 carried out under appalling conditions in the face of a superior foe and without the slightest help from the Spaniards, they had not—for all their insubordination—lost a gun or a colour.

  But next day—January 16, 1809—though their drums beat early to arms and a battery of eleven twelve-pounders had appeared during the night on a rocky eminence overhanging the British line, the French made no move. During the morning, while the last stores and baggage were embarked and Mr. Robinson of The Times paid farewell calls in the town, the scarlet lines waited unmolested under a cloudless sky among the Monte Mero rocks and heather. At midday, when it seemed clear that the enemy were not going to attack, Moore gave orders for the Reserve to embark during the afternoon and for the rest of the army to follow as soon as it was dark. Among the white houses of Corunna two miles away Crabb Robinson, going to dine at the hotel, found the table d'hote packed with departing English officers.

  But between one and two o'clock, just after Moore had observed to his secretary, " Now if there is no bungling, I hope we shall get away in a few hours," the French began to move. Soult, supposing that his enemies were breaking formation, had decided to destroy them as they went down to their ships. He had a score of heavy calibre guns to their eight light six-pounders, a superiority in manpower—16,000 or more to their 15,000—and far greater forces coming up over the mountains in his rear. The ground and all the circumstances

  1 Schaumann reckoned it 370 miles.—Schaumann, 136. 289

  were in his favour. He waited no longer but launched his troops at a run down the mountain side in three columns, with a cloud of voltigeurs swarming ahead into the valley below the British lines. At the same time the great battery of heavy guns on the rocks opposite the British right opened with terrible effect.

  Down by the harbour, as the firing broke out, everything changed. Crabb Robinson looked up from his dinner to find that the red-coated officers had all left. Crowds of people gathered in the streets and on the roofs to hear the musketry and watch the smoke rising like mist from the nearby hills. The Reserve, marching down to the quayside with thoughts set on England, halted to a man as if _ by word of command at that compelling sound; a few minutes later an aide-de-camp came spurring down the road to recall them. Perhaps the most astonishing transformation of all was that of a fatigue party digging entrenchments near the ramparts under the orders of Lieutenant Boothby of the Engineers. All his efforts had failed to induce the men to lay aside the air of extreme weariness they had assumed. Each shovel of earth approached the top of the bank as slowly as the finger of a clock. Boothby was therefore considerably astonished at their behaviour when an order came for them to join their regiments marching to the field. "They threw down their tools, jumped to their arms, halloed and frisked as boys do when loosed from school, these poor, tattered, half-dead looking devils."

  Meanwhile the French had taken all their first objectives. Pouring down the hillside in a torrent, 600 voltigeurs under old General Jardon—a true, foul-mouthed, gallant son of the Revolution who never changed his linen and always marched on foot with the leading files, carrying a musket—drove the defending piquets out- of Elvina village. He was closely followed by General Mermet with the main column. Another phalanx on its right made for the British centre. Behind, the guns of the great battery pounded cannon-balls over their heads into the British lines. Here, on the extreme right of the ridge above Elvina, twenty-six-year-old Charles Napier, commanding the 50th Foot, walked up and down the ranks making his men shoulder and order arms to distract their minds from the round shot, while his piquets fifty yards below disputed with the French skirmishers.

  Suddenly above the thunder of musketry and the cries of "En avant, tue, tue, en avant, tue!" of the French column, he heard the gallop of horses and, turning round, saw Sir John Moore. " He came at speed," he wrote, " and pulled up so sharp and close he seemed to have alighted from the air; man and horse looking at the approaching foe with an intenseness that seemed to concentrate all feeling in their eyes. The sudden stop of the animal, a cream-coloured one with black tail and mane, had cast the latter streaming forward; its ears were pushed out like horns, while its eyes flashed fire, and it snorted loudly with expanded nostrils, expressing terror, astonishment and muscular exertion. My first thought was, it will be away like the wind! but then I looked at the rider, and the horse was forgotten. Thrown on its haunches the animal came, sliding and dashing the dirt up with its fore feet, thus bending the general forward almost to its neck. But his head was thrown back and his look more keenly piercing than I ever saw it. He glanced to the right and left, and then fixed his eyes intently on the enemy's advancing column, at the same time grasping the reins with both his hands, and pressing the horse firmly with his knees: his body thus seemed to deal with the animal while his mind was intent on the enemy, and his aspect was one of searching intenseness beyond the power of words to describe. For a while he looked, and then galloped to the left without uttering a word."1

  Here the other two columns were attacking the British line which ran for about a mile along the scrubby ridge to the marshes of the Mero on its left. On the fringe of the latter the easternmost column had driven Lieutenant-General Hope's outposts out of Palavia Abaxo village and was coming on towards the slope at the double. But it soon became clear that the real danger was to Baird's division on the other flank opposite the great battery, and particularly to its extreme right where Lord William Bentinck's brigade—consisting of the 4th, the 50th and the 42nd—was holding a small knoll above Elvina. A further French column, supported at a distance by cavalry, was now surging round the western edge of the ridge into the valley which ran down behind the British position towards the harbour two miles away. To protect the latter the 52nd and the Rifles had been hastily extended, screening the rest of Paget's Reserve which had taken up its position in the suburb of Airis behind the British lines. Though the French were swirling all round the knoll on which he was posted, Lord William—an habitually placid man—was ambling about on an old mule, which seemed as indifferent to the fire as he, and talking to every one with the utmost good humour. "I only remember saying to myself," Charles Napier wrote, "this chap takes it coolly or the devil's in it."

  Presently Moore returned and joined the group on the knoll. A round-shot struck the ground close to his horse's feet, causing it to spin round, but he never took his gaze from the enemy. A second shot tore the leg off a 42nd Highlander who started screaming and

  1 Char
les Napier, I, 95. See also Leith Hay, I, 123-4.

  rolling about, much to the agitation of his comrades. "This is nothing, my lads," Moore called out, "keep your ranks, take that man away; my good fellow, don't make such a noise, we must bear these things better." His sharp tone had the calming effect intended, and the ranks closed again.1

  The battle was now reaching the climax he had foreseen. While Baird's and Hope's battered divisions continued with their sustained musketry to hold the ridge against frontal attack, the French— deceived by appearances—were pouring into the valley towards Airis and the approaches to Corunna, imagining that they had encircled the British right. They had completely failed to realise, that Moore had two unused divisions behind his lines. He now gave the order for the rest of the Reserve to reinforce the 95th and 52nd and expel the intruders and for Major-General Fraser's division, lying back near the port on the Corunna-St. Iago road, to move up in support. At the same time he launched the 4th Foot from the right of the ridge against the flank of the incautious French and sent the 50th and 42nd forward against Elvina.

  In the smoke-filled valley on his right everything went as Moore had intended. As Soult's troops surged forward they encountered Paget's advancing line and discovered—for the first time—the real right of the British army. Enraged by the memory of all they had suffered on the retreat and supported by the enfilading fire and bayonets of the 4th, the veterans of the Reserve quickly turned the enemy's advance into a rout and, carrying all before them, surged up the valley towards the great battery itself. Meanwhile, led by Napier and his young fellow major, Charles Stanhope—Pitt's nephew—the 50th cleared Elvina and dashed on in a rough, scrambling fight into the stony lanes and fields beyond. Owing to a misunderstanding, however, the Black Watch fell back to replenish their powder; on seeing this the general rode up to them, exclaiming, "My brave 42nd, if you've fired your ammunition, you've still your bayonets. Remember Egypt! Think on Scotland! Come on, my gallant countrymen!"2 Then, sending back young George Napier, his aide-de-camp, to bring up the Guards in support, he remained erect and motionless on his horse, watching the development of the attack on the French battery. At any moment now the guns would be his; the 14th Foot on his left had retaken Palavia Abaxo; the discouraged enemy, their ammunition failing, were everywhere giving ground. Behind them lay the swollen Mero and the solitary bridge at El Burgo. The experienced eye of the great Scottish soldier