Years of Victory 1802 - 1812

by Arthur Bryant

  Battle of Albuera, May 16th, 1811.

  always be overcome tended after repeated success to degenerate into the supposition that they did not exist at all.

  Yet Soult's army, though comparatively small, was formidable. It was homogeneous, capable of the highest speed, and composed of some of the best soldiers in Europe. The 15,000 Spaniards on whom Beresford relied for numerical superiority were, however brave individually, incapable of manoeuvre in battle. Such a force, as had been proved again and again in the Peninsula, was liable to become a terrible handicap on the battlefield. And both in cavalry and artillery the French were stronger than the allies—a serious consideration in an open corn-country. Soult's splendid horse were far more than a match for the polyglot 5000 opposed to them, less than a quarter of whom were British. Of guns the French had fifty to the allies' thirty-eight. Behind the latter, in the event of defeat, was the river Guadiana, with one of its two available crossings barred .by the garrison of Badajoz. The other at Jerumenha, twenty miles to the south-west, was dangerously exposed by Soult's line of advance.

  15,000 of Beresford's British, Portuguese and Germans, reached Albuera at midday on May 15th, while Soult was still fifteen miles away. Blake's 12,000 Spaniards from the south and Lowry Cole's 4th Anglo-Portuguese Division from Badajoz were due to come in during the afternoon and night. The position chosen to bar the French advance was a low, undulating ridge fourteen miles to the south-east of Badajoz and just west of the Albuera river. At its highest point it rose to about a hundred and fifty feet, at its lowest to sixty. From its unimposing and rolling skyline its bare eastern slopes inclined gently for half a mile to the little river. In contrast those to the east of the stream, though slightly lower, were covered with olive woods.

  Believing that Soult's main attack—impending from behind these woods—would follow the high road, Beresford drew up the 2nd Division in line across it and placed two battalions of the King's German Legion under Major-General Alten as an advance post in Albuera village. Behind this strong centre he proposed to station as reserve Cole's 4th Divison when it arrived during the night. His left he allotted to a Portuguese division under Major-General Hamilton and his right to Blake's Spaniards. The latter, however, were late, and only turned up after dark. They were still taking up their alignment at daybreak on the 16th.

  Unfortunately it was from this direction that the French attack came. For Soult did not oblige Beresford with the frontal assault which that officer had anticipated. A brigade of French infantry appeared, as was expected, shortly after dawn in front of Albuera and, crossing the stream, began to engage Alten's Germans. Other French units, both horse and foot, emerged from the woods opposite the Spaniards on the right of the allied line. But these were only feints, made with the object of tying down the allies to their existing front. Actually Soult was moving the bulk of his troops far to the south round Beresford's right flank, with the object of cutting his communications with Jerumenha, rolling up his line and then destroying him with his cavalry on the open plain.

  The French flanking movement was concealed from the allies by the woods which covered the eastern slopes of the Albuera valley and that of its little tributary, the Arroyo Chicapierna. Crossing the latter in the last hours of darkness, 8400 French infantry of the 5th Corps under General Girard and two brigades of cavalry under General Latour-Maubourg, took possession of some high ground about half a mile beyond the extreme right of the Allied line. They then wheeled inwards and began to move in two dense columns across a shallow depression towards the next knoll of the ridge on which the Spaniards were still taking up their stations. The latter, like Beresford, were completely taken by surprise. Instead of attacking across the stream towards which they were facing, the French were advancing upon them at right angles to their line and threatening to roll it up in detail. About the same time two cavalry brigades, which had been occupying Blake's attention by skirmishing on the banks of the brook, suddenly galloped off to join Latour-Maubourg's cuirassiers to the south, while 6000 more infantry under General Werle marched in the same direction to support the 5th Corps. By this manoeuvre Soult concentrated five-sixths of his army on the allies' flank. He also threatened Beresford's communications with Jerumenha.

  It was a most unpleasant surprise and one which at once exposed —though, as it turned out, unintentionally—the weakness of the Spanish army. For, through faulty training, the latter could not manoeuvre in the presence of the enemy. All it could do was to fight where it was placed. Only four battalions succeeded in changing front. These, under General Zayas, behaved with the utmost devotion, opposing the advance of two divisions across a shallow depression of only six hundred yards. They continued firing until the French were within a few hundred feet, losing nearly a third of their number without yielding any ground. But the rest of the Spanish army was plunged into irretrievable confusion and, save for a few isolated and fragmentary units, never got into action at all. It merely got in the way of the British.

  For the latter were now hurrying up from Beresford's over-buttressed centre to drive the French from the heights they had occupied. After standing-to before daybreak the troops of the 2nd Division had been dismissed to make their breakfast. They had scarcely had time to snatch a morsel of biscuit when the alarm was given, " Stand to your arms! The French are advancing. "J For nearly an hour they had waited at the alert to resist a major attack on their front. They were now suddenly thrown into open column, turned right and marched to their great astonishment along the ridge and through the ranks of the Spaniards for about a mile under a tremendous cannonade. In Hill's absence they were commanded by Major-General William Stewart, a zealous and gallant officer who had fought by Nelson's side at Copenhagen2 and was well known for his impetuous temper. Instead of forming his 5000 muskets into a single extended line capable of overlapping and enfilading the

  1 Leslie, 218.

  2 He had commanded the light companies embarked with the Fleet and transmitted to posterity Nelson's celebrated remark about his blind eye and Admiral Parker's unwanted signal.

  advancing French columns, he sent his leading brigade into the attack without waiting for the other two to come up. Nor did he even give it time to take the necessary precautions against cavalry action against its exposed flanks, though Latour-Maubourg's 3500 sabres were hovering ominously in the offing.

  The 2nd Division was composed entirely of English regiments. It had formed the spearhead of Wellington's attack at Oporto and the bulwark of his defence at Talavera. Its leading brigade, consisting of the Buffs and the second battalions of the 31st, 48th and 66th Foot, had been sent down to Albuera village to assist Alten.1 It had now been made to march in equal haste obliquely up the ridge to its right where, passing through and round the right of Zayas's hard-pressed Spaniards, it unexpectedly appeared on the flank of the French columns. Commanded by Colonel John Colborne—a brilliant young officer—later to become, as Field-Marshal Lord Seaton, the doyen of Victorian chivalry—it deployed under Stewart's orders as it moved, opened fire with devastating effect on the massed infantry and prepared to follow up with the bayonet. Just as it did so a storm of rain and hail burst over the battlefield, obliterating all vision for more than a few yards, while a brigade of Polish cavalry dashed in on its exposed flank. Within a few minutes thirteen hundred out of sixteen hundred men had been killed, wounded or taken prisoner. Only the 31st—the Huntingdons—who, being a little in the rear, had still not deployed, were able to save themselves by hastily forming square.

  For the next few minutes everything was in wild confusion. The Polish lancers, spearing at the wounded, rode furiously up and down the rear of Zayas's Spaniards, who, however, to their infinite credit, stood firm. At one time the triumphant horsemen all but captured Beresford and his Staff, who had to draw their swords to defend themselves. The melee was resolved by the approach of Stewart's second brigade under Brigadier-General Hoghton. Like its predecessor it went into the fight without waiting for support; so sudde
n and swift had been its orders that Hoghton had had to change out of his green undress frockcoat into scarlet in the saddle and under fire. It was led by the 29th—the famous regiment that had saved the day at Talavera. Behind the Worcesters came the first battalions of the 48th and 57th—the Northamptons and the Middlesex. They passed straight through the Spaniards, killing several of Zayas's dauntless survivors with a volley, to disperse the Polish horsemen, and then, throwing their caps in the air and giving three cheers,

  1 See John Colborne's letter of 18th May, 1811, printed in Moore Smith's Life of Lord Seaton. See also Leslie, 219-20. Oman in his fine account of the battle omits this fact.

  breasted the hill which Girard was about to occupy. Immediately in front of them, looming like giants out of the rain, they saw the advancing French, formed in column of grand divisions with tirailleurs and artillery in the intervals and extending over almost the whole of the shallow valley.1 Though outnumbered by more than five to one and without a single gun in support, the three English battalions immediately opened fire.

  Meanwhile Abercromby's brigade—the third of Stewart's division—was coming up on the left of Hoghton's and at a slightly lower level. Here some Spaniards had been trying to form a front to their flank to hold up the advance of Girard's easternmost column. They were beginning to break away when Abercromby's men, consisting of the second battalions of the 28th, 34th and 39th— Gloucesters, Cumberland's and Dorsets—swept through them and entered the fight.

  The battle now assumed the form of a duel between two French divisions and two English brigades—8000 bayonets against 3000— firing at each other through the rain across a shallow depression. The French had by now halted but the English still continued, though very slowly, to advance. Standing on sloping ground, the former were able to fire over one another's shoulders, while the English faced the deep columns in two ranks. The brunt of the French fire was borne by Hoghton's three battalions on the right and by the 31st, which had joined them after the disaster to its own brigade. The 29th lost 336 out of 476 men, the 57th 428 out of 616,2 the 48th 280 out of 646, and the 31st 155 out of 398. "There we unflinchingly stood," wrote Captain Leslie of the Worcesters, "and there we unflinchingly fell." Hoghton was killed, General Stewart and Colonel White of the 29th twice wounded, Duckworth of the 48th killed and Colonel Inglis of the Middlesex mortally wounded by a charge of grape-shot. "Fifty-seventh, die hard!" he kept crying to Ins men as his breath failed. All the while the dwindling line continued to close in on its centre and still, scarcely more perceptibly than a glacier, to advance on the dazed and astonished French until it was no more than twenty yards away, leaving its dead in rigid lines with every wound in front. Pride in their regiments and a dogged refusal to admit themselves beaten in the presence of old rivals and comrades and some invincible spark in the English heart kept these stubborn soldiers there.

  By this time, with English and French alike dying in shoals, the

  1 Leslie, 221.

  2 According to Cam Hobhouse whose brother was with the regiment, the 57th came out of the fight with only 118 rank and file and six subalterns. Everyone else was killed or wounded.—Broughton, I, 34.

  battle had reached an impasse which both commanders seemed incapable of ending. Beresford was like a man in a dream; nobody seemed to know what to do or how to bring the interminable contest to a decision. At one moment a German officer of artillery appeared saying that he had three guns but could find no one to tell him what to do with them; someone at last prevailed upon this incredibly obtuse Teuton to fire them at the enemy.1 On the other side Soult was equally shaken and appalled; he had just discovered that he had launched his attack under a misapprehension. For by a strange irony the flanking manoeuvre that had so bewildered Beresford had been delivered in the belief that Blake's Spaniards had not reached the battlefield, the French Marshal having failed to discover their arrival in the dark. He had supposed that by marching across Beresford's southern flank he had cut them off from their allies, and, when in the middle of the battle he found that with only 24,000 he was trying to roll up an army of 35,000, his nerve forsook him. He neither threw in his reserve—Werle's 6000 unused foot— nor called off the fight and withdrew, but remained like Beresford a pained spectator of the meaningless massacre.

  The battle was resolved by the action of the 4th Division. Major-General Lowry Cole had reached his allotted station behind the original allied centre at dawn after a fourteen-mile night march from Badajoz. Unfortunately one of his two brigades, that of Brigadier-General Kemmis, had got left behind owing to the premature removal of a pontoon bridge over the Guadiana and had been compelled to set off on a thirty-mile detour by Jerumenha. This reduced Cole's strength from 7000 to 5000, made up of 3000 Portuguese under Brigadier-General Harvey and the three British Fusilier battalions of Myers's brigade. At the time that Beresford sent the 2nd Division along the ridge to drive back the French from his right, he had moved up the 4th in support on the plain behind. Here with Brigadier-General Lumley's small force of British cavalry it had contained Latour-Maubourg's three brigades of horse, deterring them by its watchful presence from repeating their earlier success against Stewart's infantry.

  Cole, a thirty-nine-year-old Irishman, was a first-rate if strictly orthodox soldier. Seeing the turn the battle had taken, he sent his aide-de-camp to Beresford to ask if he might move up on to the ridge and relieve the pressure on the 2nd Division. The aide-de-camp was wounded and never arrived, and Beresford, who, after desperate efforts to wheel some immobile Spaniards into the fight, was now attempting to bring up Hamilton's Portuguese from his left,

  1 Leslie, 222.

  continued to leave Cole without orders. At this point a young major on the Portuguese Staff named Henry Hardinge—one day, like Colborne, to become a Victorian Field Marshal—took it upon himself to urge Cole to advance as the one way of saving the devoted infantry on the hill from complete destruction and the whole army from disaster. This Cole, on his own responsibility, proceeded to do, despite the risk involved, forming his admirably steady Portuguese brigade as a flank guard against Latour-Maubourg's cavalry and deploying Myers's 2000 Fusiliers as they moved up the hill under fire.

  At the sight of this menacing chain of bayonets, stretching for nearly a mile and steadily advancing against the flank of the mauled and now almost helpless 5th Corps, Soult at last staked his reserves and threw Werle's 6000 men into the fight. But though they outnumbered Cole's Fusiliers by more than two to one, they repeated the old, fatal error of opposing the British attack in column. Each of Myers's three regiments—the 23rd or Welch Fusiliers and the first and second battalions of the 7th Fusiliers—as they continued to move upwards concentrated their fire on the enemy's crowded ranks. The rest of the story lives for all time in Napier's prose.

  "Such a gallant line, issuing from the midst of the smoke, and rapidly separating itself from the confused and broken multitude, startled the enemy's heavy masses, which were increasing and pressing onwards as to an assured victory; they wavered, hesitated, and then vomiting forth a storm of fire, hastily endeavoured to enlarge their front, while a fearful discharge of grape from all their artillery whistled through the British ranks. Myers was killed, Cole, the three colonels, Ellis, Blakeney, and Hawkshawe, fell wounded, and the Fusilier battalions, struck by the iron tempest, reeled, and staggered like sinking ships. But suddenly and sternly recovering, they closed on their terrible enemies, and then was seen with what a strength and majesty the British soldier fights. In vain did Soult, by voice and gesture, animate his Frenchmen; in vain did the hardiest veterans, extricating themselves from the crowded columns, sacrifice their lives to gain time for the mass to open out on such a fair field; in vain did the mass itself bear up, and fiercely striving, fire indiscriminately upon friends and foes while the horsemen hovering on the flank threatened to charge the advancing line. Nothing could stop that astonishing infantry. No sudden burst of undisciplined valour, no nervous enthusiasm, weakened the stability of th
eir order; their flashing eyes were bent on the dark columns in their front, their measured tread shook the ground, their dreadful volleys swept away the head of every formation, their deafening shouts overpowered the dissonant cries that broke from all parts of the tumultuous crowd, as slowly and with a horrid carnage, it was pushed by the incessant vigour of the attack to the farthest edge of the height. There, the French reserve, mixing with the struggling multitude, endeavoured to sustain the fight, but the effort only increased the irremediable confusion, the mighty mass gave way and like a loosened cliff went headlong down the steep. The rain flowed after in streams discoloured with blood, and fifteen hundred unwounded men, the remnant of six thousand unconquerable British soldiers, stood triumphant on the fatal hill."1

  Stewart's dogged English battalions bore their share in that final triumph, breasting the hill where the French had stood so long side by side with the Fusiliers. Of Colborne's brigade only a quarter survived, of Abercromby's three-quarters, of Hoghton's a third. The latter marched off the field commanded by a junior captain.2 Myers's Fusiliers lost over half their 2000 men, and a Portuguese battalion which had accompanied them almost a third. The battle had lasted seven hours. The total allied loss was 5916 out of 35,284; that of the 6500 British infantry engaged 4407, or more than two-thirds. The French lost nearly 7000 out of 24,260, of which about 4000 fell on the 5th Corps and 1800 on Werle's reserve.3 These casualties were so staggering that both commanders felt that they had been defeated. While Beresford sadly regrouped his shattered units to resist a fresh assault, Soult withdrew slowly towards Seville under cover of his cavalry. "They could not be persuaded they were beaten," he wrote angrily of the Englishmen who had foiled him. "They were completely beaten, the day was mine, and they did not know it and would not run."