by Mark Urban
*
Days after Parliament had voted its thanks for the Battle of Vimiero, a member of the Commons, one Colonel Wardle, had levelled a series of damaging charges against the Duke of York. So serious were these accusations that they resulted in the suspension of the king’s son from his role as Commander in Chief of the Army.
The duke had for years kept a courtesan by the name of Mary Anne Clarke. He had broken off the affair in 1806, but she had continued to spend lavishly on fine clothes and high living, exploiting her connection with royalty to run up huge bills with London tradesmen. When the duke had told her she must live within the means of the annual pension he was giving her, she threatened to go public with accusations that she had been earning money by trafficking in army commissions. Not only had she been paid to bring the names of young officers to the duke’s attention for promotion, but she had also been able to fake his signature on letters of recommendation. The Commander in Chief refused to pay her more hush money, so she had gone to Colonel Wardle with her allegations.
The ironies of the Clarke affair were rich. The Duke of York himself grumbled that the commission system was allowing wealth alone to determine the prospects of officers. The system of purchase, and the setting of higher prices for commissions in certain prestigious regiments, meant that those parts of the Army were packed with the sons of rich tradesmen; ‘nabobs’ who had made their fortunes trading Indian spices, or the new industrial barons of Derbyshire or Lancashire. Even the Life Guards, the most prestigious of regiments, had been nicknamed the Cheesemongers in the Army a few years before and dismissed by the Duke of York as ‘nothing but a collection of London tradespeople’. But Mrs Clarke had been pushing forward the sons of those very tradesmen to whom she owed money, in lieu of settlement of debts.
In February 1809, a Parliamentary committee was set up to examine Mrs Clarke’s charges. Radical Tories, as well as Whig opponents of the Ministry, had a field day. While the duke was able to convince the House that he had never known she was taking bribes to recommend officers for promotion, the episode left a bitter taste in many mouths. It focused everyone’s concern on the injustices and confusion of the system for advancement.
Officers could make each step by a variety of means: simply being the most senior in their rank when a vacancy came up at the next one; buying that commission, and thus jumping the queue; or getting the recommendation of a senior figure like the Duke of York.
The Clarke scandal left the Army without the commander in chief who had overseen many reforms in the previous decade, and Parliament with a desire to find a fairer promotion system. Some changes were made; for example, stopping the practice used by many aristocratic families of getting a son commissioned while still at school so that he could rise up the seniority ladder. There were also new regulations to ensure that more senior ranks would be promoted strictly by seniority. The system of purchasing commissions went on, since the miraculous transformation of the sons of upstart tradesmen into gentlemen was too lucrative a scheme for the Exchequer to quash. Even these limited victories for the reformers angered many conservatives in the Army who believed promotion should be based on breeding, connections and money. William Warre, although a comparatively junior officer, was playing to his father’s Tory prejudices when he condemned in a later letter ‘the mischievous revolutionary exertions of a set of low bred soi-disant reformers’.
On 19 February, a messenger brought the post to Sprotborough Hall. Scovell broke the seal on the back of the folded paper packet and opened it. Perhaps the scandal playing itself out in London, and the promise of reform that it seemed to bring, led him to look more favourably on the letter’s contents. He was appointed a Deputy Assistant Quartermaster-General on the staff of a new expedition to Portugal and directed to make his way to Cork harbour for embarkation. His orders were signed in person by Lieutenant-General Brownrigg, the Quartermaster-General at Army Headquarters in Horse Guards. A few weeks later, Sir Arthur Wellesley was appointed to command the new venture.
Scovell had another ten days with Mary before he had to gather his portmanteaus, trunk and other effects. He had been with her for three weeks, and it was to be more than three years before they would see one another again. Britain was to try its luck once more in the Peninsula. Scovell was chancing his, with one more campaign. He was heading back to war.
NOTES
1 ‘Stewart damned Moore several years later, in one of the first histories of these events’: his History of the Peninsular War is published under his title of Lord Londonderry.
2 ‘Moore published a collection of his late brother John’s dispatches’: A Narrative of the Campaign of the British Army in Spain, by James Moore, was published in 1809.
3 ‘He wore his full dress uniform’: this detail emerges from the account of his appearance in the Gentleman’s Magazine, published that year.
– ‘In replying to the vote of thanks, he told them’: there must be various records of Wellesley’s speech, but I found one in the Goodwood Papers (the Duke and Duchess of Richmond’s papers) in Chichester Record Office. Wellesley had sent it to the duke, who was his most important godfather in the Tory hierarchy.
4 ‘Sprotborough Hall, a sumptuous pile in Yorkshire’: the Hall no longer stands. I found details of its layout and furnishings in Sprotborough Hall by Gordon Smith, a privately published monograph made available to me by the local library in Sprotborough.
– ‘George and Mary had married nearly four years earlier … in Manchester Cathedral’: the record remains in the Register of Marriages at Chester Record Office.
– ‘A family servant tactfully described Mary’s future husband’: Scovell’s early life is something of a closed book. These details came from the journal of Edward Healey, one of his servants, which was published in several parts in the Journal for the Society of Army Historical Research in 1987.
5 ‘he paid a vast sum, £3,150, to buy a captain’s commission in the 4th Dragoons’: details of these transactions can be found in WO31/158.
– ‘its officers were soon putting in long hours in the salons and assembly rooms, adorning the fashionable set surrounding the Prince of Wales’: according to F. Scott Daniel in his history of the 4th.
6 ‘Mary, it seems, shared Jane Austen’s view’: the quote comes from Mansfield Park.
7 ‘the extra pay received by a Deputy Assistant Quartermaster-General, just over £172 per annum’: details of pay from The Regimental Companion by Charles James, published in 1811.
– ‘While at the college, he transferred from the 4th Dragoons into the 57th Foot’: details of the transfer are in WO31/224
– ‘he spent the best part of two years at Wycombe working on French, German, mathematics, trigonometry’: details of the syllabus, etc. are from RMC documents at the modern-day Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, where they still keep a class of papers (WO99) relating to the college.
8 ‘He was … directed to make his way to Cork harbour for embarkation’: Scovell kept the letter from Brownrigg and it remains in the Scovell Papers.
* The Horse Guards on London’s Whitehall was the headquarters of the British Army. It was there that the Commander in Chief, Quartermaster-General, Adjutant General and Military Secretary, aided by a small staff, administered the worldwide operations of that force.
1. 249. 1076. N. T. 1082. 365. 622. 699. 655. 699. 439. 669. 655. 1085. 398. 326. 13. 309. I. 1085. 655. 249. 481. T. 980. 985. 186. T. 843. 688. 2. 718. 249. 1297. 536. 174. 1085. 1024 … 713. T. 980. 854. 655. 326. 536. 700. 699. 171. 1015. 1003. 13. T. 980. 1015. 131. T.
CHAPTER FOUR
Northern Portugal, May 1809
It was about 10 a.m. on a typically sleepy May morning as Scovell and some of the other Staff dismounted in the narrow streets of Vila Nova. Oporto, the great city of northern Portugal, had burst out of the natural confines of the plateau overlooking the Douro gorge and the Vila Nova had been created as the New Town, a suburb on its southern bank. Their chief was already ahe
ad of them, on the terrace of the Serra monastery, formulating a plan of battle. As the men found their way through the quarter, the curious peeked from their windows at the red-coated officers. Many started bundling their families down into cellars since they knew that the British were entering one part of their city while the French remained in the other. As Scovell and the others emerged beside the Serra monastery from the huddle of Vila Nova’s cheap little houses, a steep slope dropped away in front of them and a quite breathtaking vista presented itself. From their vantage-points, the British could look across the Douro, deep in its channel. The curves of the river and the depth of its course opened Portugal’s second city to them like a ripe fruit: the spires of the Sé cathedral and the Tower of Clerigos marking its tempting centre. In delivering Oporto from French occupation, Wellesley could make a sensational start to his second Portuguese campaign.
The Serra occupied a point on the southern side of the river that was singularly suited to the British general’s purpose. It was virtually the only position close enough to the heights opposite for cannon to rake them with fire. Looking down to the quayside on the northern bank, an occasional sentry making his rounds marked the only French presence. To the foreigner, there seemed an air of normality in the city. A local would have expected to see more barges and fishermen moving about on the quay, but the French sentries had told them to stay indoors. Smoke snaked lazily into the sky from the homes in the city above and behind them.
Wellesley and his men knew that the next few hours would determine whether their plan would secure them a famous victory or end in ignominy. So far, their presence in Vila Nova and that of thousands of troops filing through its little streets had gone undetected.
Oporto’s heart, that morning of 12 May 1809, remained under the hand of Marshal Soult. With him was the same force that had bundled the British into the sea at Corunna less than four months before. Despite the hour, Soult was asleep, having spent much of the night dictating orders. His Staff was settling down to a leisurely breakfast. On the northern outskirts, General Mermet was gathering a convoy of wounded, wagons and artillery, ready to evacuate the city. Soult had pulled back into Oporto when the British had come up from Lisbon, a movement that Wellesley had begun in April. The French commander had blown up a bridge that connected Vila Nova to the rest of the city. Upstream, he had scuttled the ferry boats. Downstream, he had posted dozens of look-outs from Franchesci’s cavalry. The marshal thought Wellesley more likely to attack downstream, between the city and the Douro’s exit into the Atlantic, since it was natural for the English to exploit the sea, where they would enjoy so many advantages. For all the marshal knew, the British might use naval transports to sail past the river’s mouth and land troops on the coast north of it, so turning his flank. The French cavalry had been deployed to give early warning of any such project. The marshal understood his force was smaller than that of the redcoats and their Portuguese allies, but he relied on the deep, dark waters of the Douro to protect him. If things went well, he would catch his enemies in the act of landing and crush them before they had achieved a critical mass. And if things went badly? The river would ensure that he still had a couple of days for a smooth evacuation.
Wellesley’s Staff was deeply nervous as they watched a small party of soldiers and locals bringing four barges from the northern quay to where British troops were waiting, apparently undetected by the French. Their general, they were discovering, was as good at hiding his emotions as any man could be: he wore the mask of command, possessing that inscrutability so vital for a leader in war. But they, who had so much to gain or lose from their master’s good opinion, chatted nervously, lit the long, brown cigarettes smoked by so many of the local people and waited for Wellesley’s audacious orders to unfold. There was probably much conversation about the previous day’s affair at Grijo a few miles away. A squadron of the 16th Light Dragoons had been ordered to charge the enemy as they fell back to Oporto. The ground, studded with trees and divided by stone walls, was most unsuitable for cavalry. But a figure familiar to Scovell and the other veterans of Corunna had then become part of the equation. Major-General Charles Stewart, who had used his influence to secure the post of Wellesley’s Adjutant-General, had insisted that they charge, even though he was not in command of the cavalry and could not, in any case, see the difficult ground in question. The 16th had gone in and lost many men. The French had retired in good order. Things would have to go better today.
Down on the bank, men of the 3rd Foot, the Buffs, were climbing into the barges. They were usually used for ferrying port wine, that ruby red commodity that lubricated the Anglo-Portuguese relationship. But the barges that carried casks of the stuff down the Douro towards John Bull’s table were being pressed into service ferrying troops – thirty men in each. The first wave set off at about 11 a.m. This was the moment of maximum danger. The Portuguese bargees skilfully sailed them over, set them down and turned back to the south bank for the next wave.
Until this instant, the British might have been invisible, but crossing the Douro in broad daylight, they had to be spotted. Reports began to arrive at French headquarters. Troops in red were crossing the river barely one mile away. Were they Swiss? The Swiss troops under French command also wore red coats. Perhaps some of the sentries were jumpy too. Marshal Soult was woken.
As the Buffs formed up on the quay, the few French troops in the area ran away to sound the alarm. The British quickly found a steep road that ran up the side of the northern bank. They struggled up the flagstones, almost on all fours, such was the steepness of the gradient and the weight of their equipment. Since a hail of musketry could engulf them at any moment, the Buffs’ commander raised his men’s spirits by getting them to give three cheers as they went. At the top of the slope, the Buffs burst into the Bishop’s seminary, a complex of buildings with the heavy construction of a fortress. Once they began barricading themselves in, the French at last realized what was happening. The seminary was a critical place, since it guarded the landing-point down on the quayside where further waves of troops were arriving all the time.
The man responsible for defending this sector of Oporto was General Maximilien Foy, a gifted artillery officer whose career was to become intertwined with the British, being present at almost as many of Wellesley’s battles as George Scovell. Foy was sharp enough to know that disaster could only be avoided by swift action. He ordered three battalions into attack formation and sent them forward at about 11.30.
Foy’s advance was precisely the counter-stroke anticipated by Wellesley. In the gardens beside the Serra monastery, three batteries of artillery – eighteen pieces – had been wheeled into position. The gun captains bent down and squinted along their barrels, calling final adjustments to the men with spikes, levering away at the rear, so the cannons’ mouths would be in perfect position to hurl death across the gorge. At the back of each British cannon, one man stood holding the linstock, a smouldering porte-fire, that, when the order was given, would be touched to the hole at the rear of the gun to ignite the powder and begin the barrage. The gunners’ eyes followed the columns of Frenchmen they could clearly see moving towards the seminary four to five hundred yards in front of them. They could hear them as well. Gruff voices echoing across the Douro gorge ‘en avant!’, ‘à l’attaque!’, the familiar cries of the emperor’s victorious legions.
A crackle of musketry opened from within the seminary, puffs of smoke drifting from the firing points; an exchange of fire had begun. The French, too, wanted to bring artillery to bear and were wheeling guns down by the riverbank, on the northern quay. If they could open fire on the British as their barges came ashore, they could do great slaughter, for the redcoats would be caught packed together as they disembarked. Wellesley, though, had no intention of allowing them to strike the first blow.
One of the British pieces, a howitzer, fired at the French guns on the quayside. It hurled one of the new exploding shells designed by Major Shrapnel. It was not solid, lik
e the six-pound shot fired by most of this battery, but packed with explosive powder which would send shards of its metal casing in all directions. Its target was a team of French gunners who were trying to unhitch their cannon from the horse-drawn limber used to tow it into position. As the British shell went off, it cut down every one of them, perhaps a dozen men. This was not the first time that the Shrapnel shells had been used in battle, but it was the most dramatic effect many of the Royal Artillery officers had ever seen. The other guns began cannonading at the French attack columns on the ridge above.
At Marshal Soult’s headquarters, the cacophony indicated that a serious battle had been joined in the heart of the city. Reinforcements were ordered up to join Foy’s brigade. The evacuation of French stores and guns began to assume a desperate speed. Orderlies were stuffing papers into trunks, wagons were loaded with spoils, waiting to leave.
As the guns were thundering overhead, many more boatloads of troops crossed the Douro. Men of the 48th and 66th had joined the Buffs up in the seminary. The French withdrew their last men from the quayside to support the fight on the heights above. As this happened, dozens of Portuguese emerged from their houses to launch fishing boats and more port barges into the river. The trickle of British troops crossing was soon a flood.
After three failed attempts to break into the seminary, the morale of the French troops was beginning to falter. Reports that another Anglo-Portuguese force was about to attack them in the flank were making the French officers jittery. Foy broke off the assault. By mid-afternoon, a general evacuation of Oporto was under way, with French troops pressing along the roads.