Wellesley’s war against the Marathas continued for the remainder of 1803; he followed up Assaye with two lopsided victories at Argaun in late November and the siege of Gawilgarh in mid-December. In the north, General Lake was scoring victories of his own, so Maratha morale was broken by the end of 1803, and the war came to an end. Wellesley enjoyed the fruits of victory. Having already been appointed major general, as noted, he was now also made a Knight of the Bath and received rewards that ultimately totaled £42,000. Company power was extended well into India; Wellesley’s presence there, however, came to an end in March 1805, and he reached England in September. His time in India had transformed both his leadership and tactical abilities on the field, and he returned a man well versed in the art of battle. From colonel to major general, he commanded units from battalion to corps size, learning important lessons in morale, supply, and operations with foreign troops. All of this would serve him in good stead when he served in Portugal and Spain.51
An analysis for the U.S. Army War College states six basic lessons that Wellesley learned in India: the value of logistics; attention to detail in training and supply; how to handle large bodies of men, both in and out of combat; the value of surprise in the midst of battle, especially against larger forces; physical and mental stamina for the person in command; and that the French were beatable.
Back home he left the army for a time, marrying his sweetheart from his early, poor Irish days, though the result was hardly a storybook marriage. He served in Parliament for a time and spent time back in Ireland as Irish secretary. He finally longed to return to overseas service, but in those days the Royal Navy was doing most of the fighting. His success in India was personally satisfying, but not particularly impressive to the high command. After all, it was “just” India and he was “just a sepoy general.” Wellesley managed to secure a minor command in an expedition to Denmark, where his unit was involved in the capture of Copenhagen. He served on a surrender commission and came home to England with a bit more attention focused his way.
In 1808 Napoleon declared war against Britain’s ally, Portugal, after dominating the Spanish government for some time and finally appointing his brother Joseph as the new king. Britain responded by sending an expedition to indirectly aid its ally, by appointing Wellesley to lead an attack on Spanish South American colonies. Once again he managed to avoid this sidetracking of his career when the operation was cancelled. Instead of sailing for Buenos Aires, he and 9,000 men went to Portugal; a further 5,000 sent from Gibraltar were to join them. Before they arrived in Lisbon, an invading French force attacked a small town nearby and slaughtered the population. This led to a mass popular rising by the Portuguese people. Much the same thing was taking place in Spain. In March 1808, a force of 100,000 French troops marched into Spain, forcing King Charles IV and his heir, Ferdinand, to abandon the throne. The people rebelled and rallied around Ferdinand, and the French were brutal in suppressing the movement.52
In March 1808, Wellesley’s 14,000 men landed at Mondego Bay, roughly a hundred miles north of Lisbon, and quickly began their march to liberate the Portuguese capital. A skirmish at Roliça drove a small French force back. At this point, Wellesley was superseded in command with the arrival of Sir Harry Burrard, who halted the advance until more reinforcements could arrive under the command of General Sir John Moore. Wellesley was thus standing on the defensive when a 13,000-man French force came out of Lisbon toward him. Seeing them coming, Wellesley deployed his men along a ridge at Vimeiro and dealt the French a severe defeat at little cost to his own troops. Burrard arrived and prohibited a pursuit, even though it almost certainly would have captured Lisbon. Wellesley was not happy.53 He had his first victory in Europe, albeit an incomplete one. It was not to be his last. To add insult to Wellesley’s injury, Burrard’s superior, Sir Hew Dalrymple, took overall command. Dalrymple had not seen action in fourteen years, was near retirement age, and was no more aggressive than Burrard. Wellesley found himself in the role of a lion commanded by lambs.
The Peninsular Opponents
BY 1808 THE FRENCH ARMY under Napoleon dominated almost all of Europe. This resulted from a combination of Napoleon’s leadership and the nationalist spirit of the troops. In the immediate wake of the execution of Louis XVI in 1793, most European powers banded together to suppress the French Revolution and restore the monarchy. The revolutionary government had purged most of the officer corps, so the armies that took the field were enthusiastic rabble who won because of strategic speed, swarming tactics, and remarkable bravery against lethargic European armies. Once whipped into shape by Napoleon, they not only defended France but spread across western Europe, defeating Austrians, Prussians, Russians, and anybody else who chose to fight. Throughout this time Spain was an ally, but a hesitant one. Napoleon’s removal of the legitimate monarchs and the placement of Joseph on the throne therefore was designed to strengthen the southwestern flank. Although Joseph proved a good king and gained some local support, the initial action motivated extreme Spanish resistance, and French troops had to be sent in to support the new king. When Portugal refused to join in a Continental boycott against Britain, Napoleon sent troops there as well.
The French army in Spain resembled French troops elsewhere. The swarming tactics mentioned earlier were somewhat formalized into skirmishers and light infantry, which Napoleon strengthened with horse artillery. In the regular infantry, the company numbered 140 men, and six companies made up a battalion. Three or four battalions made a regiment, two or three regiments made a brigade, two or three brigades made a division, and a collection of divisions made a corps. The cavalry was patterned on that used by Frederick’s Prussians: light cavalry for patrol and pursuit, heavy cavalry for shock attack, and dragoons in between for either or both roles. Revolutionary French armies had little cavalry, but Napoleon remedied that shortcoming and his cavalry units were firstrate—as good as any in Europe. He also expanded the number of cannons per unit in order to maximize firepower on both offense and defense.
The revolutionary forces had won success by attacking in columns rather than the standard linear tactics; this gave them power at a single point for breaking through enemy lines. The usual tactic was to send a large force of skirmishers and light infantry well in front of the main columns, and these would harass the enemy sufficiently to create enough disorganization for the columns to be effective. Unfortunately, if the enemy was not sufficiently disorganized and the breakthrough did not occur, the column formation limited firepower and created confusion to the rear. To prevent this, forces in column marched onto the battlefield behind the light infantry screen and then rapidly deployed into line just before the assault. Wellesley countered this move by using the terrain to his advantage whenever possible, and his favorite tactic was to deploy his men on the reverse slope of a hill, concealing the number and arrangement of his troops from the enemy. Light infantry skirmished in front as the enemy advanced. Thus the advancing French were usually unable to deploy from column to line until at the crest of the hill, at which point the British would already be deployed and have their massed musket fire ready.54 This became Wellesley’s signature move in Portugal and Spain.
Wellesley’s primary problem throughout his peninsular campaign was manpower. He had the only significant force of British soldiers and therefore could not afford either defeats or even costly victories. He was aided by forces supplied from both Spain and Portugal, though the quality of the troops, and their motivation, varied widely. The French brutality proved a great morale factor for both Spanish and Portuguese, but they never completely trusted British motives.55 These troops were, however, vitally necessary to both the British army and their own countries if the French were to be both defeated and removed. The Spanish did serious damage to the French armies with guerrilla warfare, reportedly killing an average of 100 French soldiers per day. Since, however, it was Portugal that was Britain’s ally and the base for all operations, it was there that troops had first to be raised. At
the beginning of the war the Portuguese army had been almost useless. To try to whip them into shape Wellesley requested the appointment of William Beresford, to which the authorities in London agreed. Michael Glover, in his book on the Peninsular Campaign, describes him thus: “Although a field commander of only moderate ability, he was an organizer of genius. He had need to be. As one of his British staff wrote, ‘The Portuguese soldier is naturally indolent. He falls with the greatest facility into slouching and slovenly habits, unless he is constantly roused and forced to exert himself.’”56
Beresford not only trained the Portuguese but also commanded them in battle. He did both jobs well. Beresford was named marshal of the Portuguese army in 1809 and brought with him a number of British officers to serve at all levels of the army. The result was remarkable, and the Portuguese came to be considered almost the equal of British soldiers, described by Wellesley as “the fighting-cocks of the army.”57 Meanwhile, it was not until 1812 that the rebel Spanish government granted Wellesley command of its armies. Wellesley took them into his forces only on the condition that he was in total command and his orders would not be overridden, no promotions or demotions would be made without his recommendation, and the Spanish government would do its best to keep its troops paid and equipped.
Wellesley also commanded two German units, the King’s German Legion and the Brunswick Oels. Both brought with them their own organizations, staffs, cavalry, and artillery. Their infantry were well trained, and their light infantry battalions had companies of expert riflemen that were employed very successfully for skirmishing and sniping.
The main difference in the British army of the Peninsular Campaign was the influence of General Sir John Moore with the support of the commander in chief, the Duke of York. Moore was a forward-thinking soldier intent on developing soldiers through good training and trust rather than the lash and iron discipline. In this he succeeded quite well. Moore acted on the Dundas rule book and believed in the trained, alert soldier with self-motivation. Officers should earn the respect of their men and be models of self-discipline. Add to these concepts extensive drill and training, and remarkable results ensued.58 Since all soldiers in the British army were recruits, they were more motivated than those who would have been conscripted or pressed into service, and Moore believed it was vital to use that sense of volunteerism. By 1808 desertion was almost nonexistent, and the British army was the best for its size in Europe. Further, the continued development of loyalty to the regiment kept the necessary esprit de corps that all effective armies must have. Wellesley himself did not necessarily look with such attitudes on his soldiers, but his ability to win was enough to develop loyalty from his troops.
The Battle of Vittoria
WELLESLEY’S FIRST VICTORY of the Peninsular Campaign, the previously mentioned battle at Vimeiro, could not have had worse consequences. His two superior officers, Dalrymple and Burrard, responded to a French offer to negotiate, which resulted in the Convention of Cintra, under which the French army in Portugal, faced with a British army and surrounded by angry Portuguese, should be evacuated back to France. Further, it should be evacuated in British ships and allowed to take all its arms and loot. Dalrymple and Burrard agreed.59 The news of this outrageous agreement was met in London with a recall of the two commanders and Wellesley to face a court of inquiry. All the charges were ultimately dismissed and swept under the carpet. The testimony did reveal, however, that Wellesley had performed well in the field and been overruled by his superiors at the negotiating table. Parliament voted to thank Wellesley for the victory at Vimeiro, Dalrymple was dismissed as governor of Gibraltar, and Burrard was retired to duty in England. As was often the case with military scandals, it had been smoothed over so as not to ruffle feathers. Wellesley retired to Dublin with what seemed to be a bleak outlook for his career.60
Sir John Moore took over the war in the peninsula with some success until Napoleon himself arrived for a season and drove the British army out of Spain after the Battle of Corunna, during which Moore was killed. Napoleon went back to war against the Austrians, and Wellesley was summoned to take sole command in Portugal to save the British effort. He returned to Portugal in April 1809 and made his presence felt almost immediately. Within three weeks of his arrival he had defeated Napoleon’s Marshal Soult at Oporto and begun planning future campaigns. At the end of July he defeated Napoleon’s brother Joseph at Talavera, for which he was given the title Viscount Wellington. In spite of this initial rapid offensive, he knew that he did not have the numbers as yet to challenge the French to one decisive battle. He thus realized that an Iberian campaign would be a long one and instituted what came to be called his “cautious system.” This took advantage of the mountainous Portuguese terrain to establish garrisons from which to launch harassing raids. In the meantime, he trusted Beresford to whip the Portuguese army into shape.61
Wellington spent the next four years fighting French troops across Spain and Portugal, on the offensive when he could and on the defensive when he must. He accomplished his mission to defeat the French forces while at the same time husbanding his own, which obliged retreating at times when superior numbers made discretion the better part of valor. By the spring of 1813, however, he had finally secured Portugal sufficiently to invade Spain once again, swearing at the outset of the campaign that he was saying good-bye to Portugal forever.
On orders from Napoleon, Joseph had moved the capital from Madrid northwestward to Villadolid, near the junction of the Duoro and the Pisuerga Rivers. Joseph’s position was deteriorating in the wake of news in February 1813 of his brother’s disastrous invasion of Russia. Napoleon needed 15,000 veterans from Spain back in France in order to have some foundation for rebuilding his army. The forces departed under the command of Marshal Soult (with whom Joseph did not get along), and the new commander assigned to Joseph was an old friend, Marshal Jean-Baptiste Jourdan, who, as Glover describes him, “could not be called an outstanding soldier but [was] honest and obedient, both rare qualities among the marshals in Spain, and [whose] theoretical appreciations of the situation were often more realistic than those of many more renowned figures.”62
Joseph and Jourdan were looking at a terrible situation. Although Wellington had been pushed out of Spain back into Portugal the previous autumn, the Spanish guerrillas were creating havoc across the country, and large numbers of French troops had to be employed just to maintain something resembling secure lines of communication from central Spain back into France. The French Army of the North, 20,000 men, struggled to control the region between the Ebro River, the Pyrenees, and the Bay of Biscay. During the early months of 1813 the 17,000-man French Army of Portugal marched north to assist. The Army of the South, made up of 35,000 men, was deployed in a curving line from Madrid to the Duoro River at Toro, and the Army of the Center supported it in the area of Segovia and Villadolid. The French had decided to try to hold what they could; virtually the entire peninsula south of the Tagus River had been abandoned to the guerrillas.
Joseph and Jourdan suspected that Wellington would try to repeat his strategy of 1812 and drive toward Madrid by way of Salamanca, and Wellington went to great lengths to convince the French leaders they were correct. In the spring he trained his new Spanish troops virtually within sight of Ciudad Rodrigo, where a relatively brief but successful siege had occurred in January 1812. Lieutenant General Sir Rowland Hill commanded some 30,000 men in this area, and he started the offensive on 22 May. Six cavalry brigades rode ahead as a wide screen, followed by the Light Division. Behind this there was only an undersized corps consisting of one British, one Portuguese, and two Spanish divisions.63 Joseph’s main force, stationed along the Duoro between Toro and Tordesillas, was strengthened to 50,000 and prepared for the attack. Ciudad Rodrigo and Salamanca fell with virtually no fighting. Then … nothing.
While Joseph and Jourdan pondered Wellington’s next move, it struck them by surprise from the northwest toward the French right flank at Toro. This was the ma
in force of some 42,000 under Lieutenant General Sir Thomas Graham. These troops had gone through the supposedly impenetrable tracks through the mountain range of northern Portugal and then driven across the Esla River to Zamora before the French were aware of any enemy forces in the area. Joseph and Jourdan had no choice but to withdraw their army to Villadolid to avoid being outflanked.
Wellington, who had been conspicuous during the display before Ciudad Rodrigo, had secretly moved himself over to Graham’s force, and he took control of both forces at Toro, then marched northeast parallel to the Pisuerga River. In an advance that Napoleon himself might have envied, Wellington kept a heavy cavalry screen along the river to hide his army’s movements behind it. This force moved so quickly that by the time Joseph retreated to Villadolid his army was on the verge of being flanked; he withdrew further to Burgos and found himself in the same situation. Wellington’s maneuvers kept the French on the run, with little happening other than an occasional cavalry or artillery duel. On 13 June the French blew up the castle at Burgos and withdrew further northeast toward France.64 The British and their allies had yet to fight much more than a skirmish, but they had the French army on the ropes.
Unfortunately for Wellington, however, the French got to move across much easier ground than did he. An analysis of the coming battle describes the country as “mountainous and criss-crossed by gorges and good defensive positions. Indeed the area north of Burgos is unlike any other part of Spain, with wooded plateaux fringed with sheer drops and ravines.… It was also terrain through which the French thought it impossible to bring guns and wagons.”65 The allied force moved so quickly even through this terrain, however, that the French were never able to take advantage of its defensive strengths. The British crossed the Ebro unopposed and moved east toward Vittoria, where Joseph and Jourdan had decided to make a stand behind the Zadorra River.
Masters of the Battlefield Page 57