The Age of Elegance

by Arthur Bryant

  On June 13 th Wellington crossed the Agueda with 51,000 men, including 18,000 Portuguese and 3000 Spaniards. Marmont, with

  1 By April, 1812, such was the concentration of troops for the impending march to Moscow, only one French division remained in Italy. Oman, V, 342.

  one division in the Asturias and the rest of his army dispersed, could offer little immediate resistance. Ordering a concentration, he fell back across the Tormes. As the British entered Salamanca on the 17th, a surge of ecstatic humanity broke over the red-coated columns in the sun-bathed Palaza Mayor. It was the first Spanish city to be liberated in three years. Even Wellington, as he sat writing orders on his sabretache, was almost unhorsed by a charge of ladies.1

  He remained, however, cautious. During the next ten days he blockaded three small forts which Marmont had built outside Salamanca. He made no attempt to bring the French to battle. Instead he covered the siege and awaited their attack in one of those innocent-looking but carefully chosen positions which had so often proved fatal to them. But Marmont, taught by experience, was cautious, too. After several half-hearted attempts at relief, he allowed the forts and their garrisons to fall.

  Thereafter he fell back for thirty miles across the rolling Leon plain to the Douro. Here with his army concentrated and almost equal in size to Wellington's, and with ample reserves behind, he had only to hold the crossings from Toro to Tordesillas to bring the British offensive to an end. If he could stay there until the harvest was gathered, the French position in northern Spain would be secure for another year. For a fortnight at the beginning of July, while far away Napoleon's interminable columns drove through Lithuania into Russia, the two armies faced one another across the shallow, sunlit Douro. Then on the 16th, seeing nothing to stop him, Marmont recrossed the river at Tordesillas and feinted at Wellington's right flank. Next day, as the latter parried the stroke, he deftly shifted his forces eastwards and, crossing again at Toro, struck at his left. Like a true son of the Revolution and a Marshal of France, he was in search of glory: to survive he had to outshine his rivals.

  To the disgust of his army Wellington promptly retreated. Unlike his adversary, who could live by plundering the country, he was dependent on his commissariat wagons. Rather than risk his communications with Portugal, he fell back towards the hillier and more barren terrain whence he had come and where he would have Marmont once more at a disadvantage. For the next six days the two armies within easy striking distance of one another marched and

  1 Tomkinson, 162. See also Gomm, 272; Kincaid, 150; Oman, V, 360; Simmons, 236.

  manoeuvred under a burning sun, steadily moving south-westwards as Marmont tried to cut off Wellington from his base and Wellington gave ground to prevent him. Both, like skilful fencers, kept their forces closely concentrated, neither for a moment lowering his guard. On July 18th, when there was some skirmishing, and again on the 20th, the two armies marched within gunshot all day in parallel columns, their accoutrements glittering in the sunlight, while swarms of vultures cruised overhead.1

  The French, who were slightly the better marchers, reached the Tormes first, crossing the river at the ford of Huerta, ten miles east of Salamanca, at midday on the 21st. Wellington recrossed the river the same evening about two miles above Salamanca. Marmont was driving straight for his communications, and, though the gloom of the liberated city now surpassed its ecstasy of a month earlier, the British commander resolved that night to abandon it and retire on Ciudad Rodrigo. Without a major blunder by his opponent he could not hope for a decisive victory or for one without losses which he could not replace. The two armies were by now almost equal, the French having 48,500 men with a marked superiority in guns to the Anglo-Portuguese 50,000. And thanks to the guerrillas' interception of French dispatches Wellington, unlike Marmont, knew that 15,000 men under King Joseph and Jourdan were hastening to Marmont's aid from Madrid. He had also learnt that the British Commander-in-Chief in Sicily had failed to make a diversion on the Valencian coast and was contemplating instead an expedition to Italy. Faced with the possibility of Suchet also reinforcing Marmont, there seemed nothing for it but to abandon the offensive for another year. He could not afford to be cut off from Portugal or to fight a battle which he was not reasonably sure of winning.

  To those whose lives he was so prudently husbanding Wellington's decision to retreat came as a bitter disappointment. Their confidence in their own prowess, the warmth of their welcome from the Spanish people, the hopes of diving deeper into the romantic land before them, had ended in the old way. To add to their humiliation, that night as they lay tentless and hungry in the open fields they were assailed by a fearful thunderstorm. Flashes lit the blackness of the plain, horses broke from their piquets and galloped into the

  1 "I was frequently impressed with the horror of being wounded without the power to keep them off." Tomkinson, 190.

  enemy lines, and the earth threw up multitudes of drowning worms. The summer dawn of the 22nd found the British soaked, aching and sullen.

  In Marmont's mind Wellington's iron self-restraint had by now established the idea that he was incapable of any but a defensive role. It had even eradicated the painful impression of British invincibility forced on the French consciousness by the battles of the past four years. It caused the Marshal to throw all caution to the winds. On the morning of July 22nd he saw his chance—the greatest of his career. Before the elusive British could slip away again to the Portuguese mountains, he would treat them as his master had treated the Austrians and Prussians. By reverting to the elan of revolutionary tradition, he would do to the stiff-necked redcoats what Junot, Victor, Soult, Ney, Massena, even Napoleon had failed to do.

  With this intention the Marshal resumed his westward march on the morning of the 22nd, edging as he had done before round the right flank of the mainly invisible British, while his guns maintained a brisk cannonade against such of their positions as he could see. Presently, mistaking adjustments in Wellington's disposition for signs of an immediate retreat, he resolved to hasten the pace of his march towards the Salamanca-Rodrigo highway. He therefore ordered his advance-guard—the left flank of the line he presented to the British—to hurry ahead to envelop their right and cut their communications. By so doing he extended his force in the presence of an enemy still concentrated.

  The British Commander-in-Chief, guardian of the only army England possessed, had told his Government that he would never risk a general encounter at a disadvantage. But he had never said that he would not seize victory if it was offered him. Between two and three in the afternoon the leading French division, which was marching across his front along a low ridge about a mile away, began to race ahead. Seeing the gap between it and the more slowly moving centre widen, Wellington dropped the chicken leg he was eating and seized a telescope. Then, with a quick, "That will do," he sent off his aides with orders to his divisional commanders, and, mounting his horse, galloped three miles across the stony fields to the village of Aldea Tejada where, about two miles north of the point on which the French advance-guard was moving, he had posted the 3 rd Division in reserve. Here he bade his brother-in-law, Edward Pakenham, move forward, take the heights in his front and drive everything before him. Then, before the colours could be encased and the men receive their orders to prime and load, he was on his way back to his position in the British centre. He had three hours of daylight and a chance that might never recur.

  Before him the French army was spread out on a series of low rolling hills, moving in column of march in a great semicircle westwards and on a scattered front of more than five miles. It was a sight not dissimilar to that which confronted Nelson at Trafalgar. The marching columns had their right flanks towards him. Because of the rolling and wooded nature of the country and the skill with which he had placed his own formations out of sight, they seemed unaware of the compact force which they were so hopefully passing and attempting to encircle. Indeed, misled by the westering movement of Wellington's baggage-train on the Sa
lamanca-Rodrigo highway, Marmont was under the impression that the British army had already begun its retreat. Between his leading division, that of Thomieres, and those of Maucune, Clausel and Brennier in his centre there was a gap of more than a mile, while another of equal size separated the centre from the four scattered divisions following.

  Wellington, as always in an enemy's presence, had his force closely in hand. While his left, consisting of the ist and Light Divisions and Bock's German cavalry—just over 10,000 men—faced eastwards, the bulk of his army, which in view of the French encircling movement he had earlier in the day wheeled towards the south, was grouped around the little village of Arapiles. Here 14,000 British infantry of the 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th Divisions, most of Cotton's cavalry, nearly 14,000 Portuguese and Espana's 3000 Spaniards—a force of some 34,000—were drawn up in line of battle within a mile of the 18,000 marching men of Marmont's centre. Further to the west another 6000 British and Portuguese, under Pakenham, were moving up from Aldea Tejada to strike at the head of Thomieres' strung-out advance-guard of 4500 infantry and attendant cavalry. The rest of the French army, more than 24,000 strong, was still coming up from the east.

  Marmont, as Wellington remarked to his Spanish aide-de-camp, was lost. Supported by D'Urban's Portuguese cavalry, the 3 rd Division cut across Thomieres' line of march, in Napier's phrase, like a meteor. As it reached the summit of the plateau, it deployed and opened fire. The French were caught strung out on the march, surprised and at a hopeless disadvantage. Thomieres was killed, half his division mown down and all its guns captured. The survivors were driven back into the ranks of those behind.

  Here the British 4th and 5th Divisions, with their flanks covered by Bradford's Portuguese and Cotton's cavalry, had been moving in line across a shallow depression towards the French centre. As soon as Marmont had seen the British coming up over the opposing ridge, he had realised his mistake: Wellington was not a purely defensive

  general after all. But it was too late to retrieve it; a few minutes later, while galloping forward, he was struck down by a shell. Though his artillery, with 78 guns to the British 54, raked the oncoming scarlet lines, nothing could break that confident advance; it came on like the bore of a tidal river. Behind, in support, followed the 6th and 7th Divisions. For some reason Maucune's men awaited the attack in square, a little in rear of the crest along which they had been moving. They could not have chosen a more disastrous formation. The 5th Division, marching with review precision, breasted the ridge and, at an order from General Leith, fired a tremendous volley. Then, through the smoke and darkness, it charged the shattered French squares with the bayonet.

  As the latter broke, a terrible fate overtook them. At that moment the first of Cotton's cavalry brigades, consisting of the 5th Dragoon Guards and the 4th and 5th Dragoons under Major-General Le Marchant, appeared on the skyline. Le Marchant was a brilliant officer who had recently joined the army after serving as the first Commandant of the Royal Military College at High Wycombe. He at once led his men to the charge. Though he himself fell, they caught Maucune's flying infantry in the flank with their heavy swords and drove right into Brennier's division behind; many of the former were so disfigured by sabre cuts that all traces of the human face and form were obliterated. Wellington, watching the scene with Cotton, declared he had never seen anything so well executed in his life. By the time Leith's infantry had finished the massacre as little was left of Brennier's and Maucune's divisions as of Thomieres'. More than a third of Marmont's army had been destroyed in forty minutes.

  Further to the east the Allied attack was less successful. Here Pack's Portuguese failed to carry the rocky side of the Great Arapile knoll which, dominating the battlefield at the point where the original British line turned northwards, had been occupied by Bonnet's division as a pivot for the French enveloping movement. Charged by the defenders when gallantly trying to scramble up its steep side, the Portuguese were thrown back with serious loss. Their repulse exposed the left flank of Cole's 4th Division which, after breasting the ridge, found itself assailed on two sides by Clausel's and Bonnet's men. It, too, was forced back in confusion.

  For a moment it seemed to Clausel, who had succeeded to the command, that the battle might be retrieved. While the remnants of the French left were flying into the wood, the right centre, consisting of his own and Bonnet's divisions, with Ferey's in support, struck boldly at the ridge from which Wellington's attack had been launched. But as they pursued Cole's and Pack's retreating men, they encountered Clinton's 6th Division coming up in an unbroken line, with the ist and 7th Divisions on either flank. As so often before, the unexpected appearance of Wellington's carefully husbanded reserves was decisive. In twenty minutes Bonnet's and Clausel's men were as badly beaten as their comrades.

  It was left to Ferey's and Sarrut's divisions, forming line across the edge of the forest to the south-east, to cover the escape of the

  French army. For half an hour in the failing light they fought with splendid steadiness, inflicting the heaviest British casualties of the day on Clinton's men who were trying to dislodge them.1 As at Talavera, the dry grass was kindled by the fire of the guns, so that the British, fighting up the slope towards the forest, seemed to be attacking a burning mountain. As darkness fell, the heroes of the French rearguard, almost naked and besmeared with blood and dust, withdrew, still firing, into the woods.

  Without the failure of a Spanish officer whom Wellington had placed in the castle of Alba to guard the crossing of the Tormes, scarcely a man would have got away. Believing the bridge there to be securely held, Wellington assumed that the only escape for the French was to the north-east by Huerta and sent the unused Light Division and Ponsonby's cavalry to seize the ford there. But with the incorrigible individualism of his race, the commander at Alba had not only abandoned his post, but refrained from informing his British chief that he had done so. And it was to the bridge which he had left open, eight miles south-east of the battlefield, that the demoralised survivors of the French army fled. As a result Wellington was robbed of a victory as complete as Ulm or Jena.

  Yet though more than 30,000 of Marmont's men escaped, they did so without cohesion and with no immediate hope of being able to reform as a fighting force. As Foy, the commander of the only undamaged division, confided to his diary, the catastrophe of the Spanish war had come. With the Army of Portugal's rout the balance of Napoleon's dispositions in the Peninsula had been destroyed. So had the legend of French invincibility. Suffering 15,000 casualties to Wellington's 5000, the French left in his hands two eagles, six colours, twenty guns and 7000 prisoners. Their Commander-in-Chief and four divisional commanders were among the casualties. The battle, Foy thought, raised Wellington almost to the level of Marlborough. "Hitherto," he wrote, "we had been aware of his prudence, his eye for choosing a position, and his skill in utilising it. At Salamanca he has shown himself a great and able master of manoeuvre. He kept his dispositions concealed for almost the whole day; he waited till we were committed to our movement before he developed his own. ... He fought in the oblique order—

  1 Two British regiments, the nth and 6ist, lost 340 out of 516 and 366 out of 546 men. Oman, V, 462.

  it was a battle in the style of Frederick the Great."1 Not since the victor of Blenheim supped with two captive Marshals of France in his coach had a British army won such glory.

  Wellington's pursuit was not the spectacular affair that followed Napoleon's victories. He had only 3000 cavalry; his tired men had fought three major engagements in six months, and many of his regiments were gravely depleted. Sweeping gestures and risks were beyond his means. Apart from his German, Portuguese and Spanish auxiliaries, he had still less than 40,000 troops in the Peninsula. Unlike Napoleon he could not look to conscriptions to fill his ranks; he was the servant of a parsirnonious Parliament. And there were still four other French armies in Spain.

  Except for two regiments of Foy's rearguard, who were annihilated in square by a brilliant char
ge of German cavalry on the day after the battle, the retreating French received little injury from their pursuers. They moved too fast for them. The British commander was more concerned to feed his advancing columns and to prevent King Joseph's army from Madrid from joining and rallying Clausel's fugitives.

  Only when he learnt that Joseph was Withdrawing again across the Guadarramas, did Wellington push on to Valladolid where he took another 17 guns -and 800 sick on the 29th. Here he waited a week till he was satisfied that the shattered Army of Portugal, falling back on-Burgos, was not !being reinforced by Caffarelh's Army of the North. Then, finding ^hat ;the latter was fully occupied by Popham's coastal operations, he turned his face to the south. On August 5 th, a fortnight after Salamanca, leaving Clinton with the 6th-Division to watch Clausel, he marched with 36,000 troops to Segovia and Madrid. His resolution was reached after learning that the British expedition from Sicily had arrived after all on-the Mediterranean coast. Reckoning that this would keep Suchet from reinforcing his colleagues, he decided to seize the Spanish capital before Soult's 45,000 troops from Andalusia could come to the rescue of Joseph's outnumbered Army of the Centre. For its liberation would

  1 The sources used for the account of the battle are Oman, V, 418-74; Fortescue, VIII, 480-98; Wellington's Dispatches; Napier, Book XVIII, Ch. iii; Colonel A. H. Burne's The Art of War on Land; Foy; Gomm, 272-80; Dickson Papers, II, 685-97; Granville, II, 437, 450; Simmons, 241-2; Grattaiv238-6o; Granville, I, 75; -Vere,3i-7; Tomkinson, 168-89; Lynedoch, 2a6-7;-Leith Hay„ II, 46-58.