by Mark Urban
With much of the Light and 3rd Divisions now across the river and somewhat to the rear of the foremost French line, the rest of this advanced defensive cordon had to fall back. These enemy redeployments gave the Rifles half an hour of calm, which made everyone a little uneasy, in case a counter-attack was about to be launched. Soon enough, though, it was the British who were moving forward again, onto a tree-covered knoll about half a mile east of the Villodas bridge. Behind this feature was a village called Arinez, which the French were barricading and preparing to defend.
On emerging from the trees on top of the knoll of Arinez, the 43rd and 95th were, for the first time, visible to a great many French defenders. An ear-splitting barrage of cannon began. The first rounds roared overhead and then others started skipping across the ground, smashing whoever got in the way. One British officer estimated that they had come under the fire of thirty pieces. The 43rd were quickly ordered to lie down. They could see, though, that quite a bit of the firing was coming from some artillery in and around Arinez itself. To their left one of Picton’s brigades began to form up, ready to assault the village. ‘During the few minutes that we stopped there,’ wrote Kincaid, ‘while a brigade of the 3rd division was deploying into line, two of our companies lost two officers and thirty men, chiefly from the fire of artillery.’
Into this maelstrom rode Wellington, placing himself in great danger. The battle had reached a decisive moment and the British commander knew that if the French could be driven out of Arinez, their centre would be broken. ‘I heard a voice behind me, which I knew to be Lord Wellington’s,’ wrote Kincaid, ‘calling out, in a tone of reproof, “Look to keeping your men together, sir.”’
Leach’s company was one of those pinned under this heavy fire. Lieutenant Gairdner, Corporal Brotherwood and Private Costello were all serving in it. Gairdner was one of those who soon became a casualty. Costello was hit too: ‘A grape or round shot struck my pouch with such violence that I was hurled several yards along the ground. From this sudden shock, I imagined myself mortally wounded but, on being picked up, I found the only damage I had sustained was to my pouch, which was nearly torn off.’ Private Miles Hodgson, the pardoned Rodrigo deserter, ran up to help Costello, only to get a bullet in the face. Leach’s company, and the 6th Company under Lieutenant FitzMaurice, went charging down the hill towards Arinez.
The walls and hedges on the village’s outskirts were now lined with French defenders. Wellington rode across the short distance to Picton’s men where he personally formed up the 88th, the Connaught Rangers, for the advance. With a beating of drums, they marched forward in line, presented their pieces only thirty or forty yards from the enemy and game them a thumping volley, a cheer and the bayonet. The French fled back through the village. One battery of guns which had been firing in support of them was quickly limbered up by its commander, for in his trade losing your cannon was the ultimate disgrace. At this moment the artillery men got help: a counter-attack by the French infantry briefly reclaimed the village, allowing this battery to pull out. Seeing the track that the horses towing the cannon were taking, Lieutenant FitzMaurice called his men to follow him and raced across an open field to intercept them.
On arriving near the guns, FitzMaurice was running at a cracking pace. He shouted to his company, urging them forward, only to make the uncomfortable discovery that just a couple had managed to keep up with him as he ran. The Irish lieutenant threw himself onwards nevertheless, the French gunners and drivers defending themselves with whatever came to hand. There was a short, sharp, close-range fight in which a pistol was discharged almost in FitzMaurice’s face, the ball going through his shako. Soon he and another rifleman had shot one of the draught horses and were cutting the traces that connected it to the howitzer it was pulling. The lieutenant and four riflemen had captured the first French gun of the day, but certainly not the last.
As the 2nd Company burst into Arinez, Costello caught sight of Lazarro Blanco sticking a straggler with his bayonet. The Spanish private plunged the blade in manically, taking out the sufferings of his country on this unfortunate Frenchman, cursing him all the time in the most profane and abusive language.
With their enemy streaming back from Arinez, the Light and 3rd Divisions followed up. There was still heavy firing, but the French Army was disintegrating. Its battalions had broken into clumps of men running across the countryside, heading east. Near the city of Vitoria, hundreds of wagons, containing the treasures plundered by the French during their five-year occupation, fell into British hands.
Wellington had scored an emphatic triumph. The French Army lost 151 artillery pieces – all but one of those weapons that they had brought to the field. Many of the British soldiers felt a determined cavalry pursuit would have annihilated the disordered wreck of Joseph’s army. No such movement by the horse soldiers materialised and one Rifle officer noted, ‘It was impossible to deny ourselves the satisfaction of cursing them all, because a portion of them had not been there at such a critical moment.’ The Household Cavalry regiments were sent into Vitoria to stop the Allied army plundering it, Hennell of the 43rd being unable to resist a dig at these court soldiers, writing home, ‘I do not know what good they did, if any I am sure you would hear of it.’
As for the Light Division, they felt they had more than earned the rewards that might be earned from plundering the French baggage. Their role in assuring the passage of the Zadorra and attacking Arinez had been the most important part of any general action they had enjoyed since Busaco almost three years before. Some soldiers, though, were to be rewarded beyond their wildest dreams, for among the chests and cases were millions of gold doubloons and silver dollars.
‘I observed a Spanish muleteer in the French service carrying a small but exceedingly heavy portmanteau towards the town,’ wrote Costello. ‘I compelled him lay it down, which he did, but only after I had given him a few whacks with my rifle.’ These saddlebags contained a breathtaking sum – perhaps as much as £1,000 in Spanish coin. A couple of troopers of the 10th Hussars, seeing Costello staggering along with this load, soon tried to divide it with him. ‘Retiring three or four paces, I brought [my rifle] to my shoulder and swore I would shoot dead the first man to place his hands upon my treasure.’ This persuaded the cavalry to look elsewhere. Costello clapped hands on a mule to carry the bags and headed back to find his company.
One other rifleman was rumoured to have taken £3,000 in coin. He had the added good fortune of a wife following with the regimental baggage. They sewed their gains into a mule saddle, which she kept closely under her supervision, the couple later depositing their money at a bank in Dover. Costello knew there was nobody he could trust in this way. Instead he signed over £300 to the regimental paymaster, who was happy to acquire the coin in order to settle his many accounts and issue a receipt in return. Some the private also loaned to officers. The remainder he and Tom Bandle, a messmate whom he had taken into his confidence, guarded. Bandle had sailed with Costello in the 3rd Company, back in 1809, and upon its demise had also been transferred into Leach’s – they had a long history of fighting and drinking together. He was a little weasel of a man who, in return for a small cut, helped Costello guard the cash. Most of it was to go on ensuring he and his company lived well and were adequately lubricated during the coming months.
Most soldiers did not of course reap quite such rewards, but that did not stop them searching hard. Costello himself put it charmingly: ‘Even if our fellows had been inclined to be honest, their good fortune would not allow them.’
The 95th’s officers did not benefit in quite the same way. Simmons recorded, ‘I lay down by the fire in a French officer’s cloak, which one of the men gave me; he had that day shot its wearer.’ Leach dropped down in his company’s bivouac, exhausted. ‘The soldiers of my company brought me a large loaf of excellent French bread, some Swiss cheese, cognac brandy and excellent wine they had found in some French general’s covered wagon.’ The men, in sharing their bounty
with delicacies for their officers, ensured that they remained free to roam that night. Leach jotted in his journal, ‘Our soldiers did nothing the whole night but eat, drink and smoke, talk over our glorious successes and occassionally steal away from camp to look for plunder which it must be allowed was very excusable.’
Around the 2nd Company campfires there was much discussion about what had happened to them that day and who had been absent from roll-call. Private Dan Kelly piped up, ‘Don’t drink all the wine boys, until we hear something about our absent messmates. Do any of you know where Jack Connor is?’
‘He was shot through the body when we took the first gun in the little village near the main road,’ was the reply.
Bob Roberts spoke next, asking, ‘Where is Will John?’
‘A ball passed through his head,’ said another. ‘I saw him fall.’
Tom Treacy then joined in: ‘Musha, boys! Is there any hope of poor Jemmy Copely getting over his wounds?’
‘Poor Copely, both his legs were knocked off by a round shot.’
Treacy looked down bitterly. ‘By Jasus, they have kilt half our mess. But never mind boys, fill a tot, fill a tot. May I be damned but here’s luck … Poor Jemmy Copely! Poor Jemmy! They have drilled him well with balls before, damn them, now they have finished him. The best comrade I ever had, or ever will have.’ As Treacy said these last words, a tear streaked down his blackened face.
In the days following Vitoria, the Rifles fell in with the French rearguard several times. After the great affair of 21 June, these fights piqued their superstitions, one officer summing it up: ‘After surviving a great day, I always felt I had a right to live to tell the story; and I, therefore did not find the ensuing three days’ fighting half as pleasant as they otherwise would have been.’
Just as the riflemen had begun to think more about their own survival, so their propensity for plunder had grown, as their brigade set off in pursuit of a remnant of the old Army of Portugal. On 29 June in a village called Caseda, quite a few riflemen joined in a stripping of firewood and farm produce so vigorous that it crossed the thin line between foraging and plunder. Wellington got one of his staff to write an angry letter to the commander of the Light Division, exclaiming, ‘This renewed report of disorder committed by soldiers of your division has much dissatisfied the Commander of the Forces, his excellency being of the opinion that such continued irregularity shows evident relaxation of discipline both regimental and divisional.’
The following day, following Headquarters’ complaints, Lieutenant Simmons was put in command of a party of riflemen collecting firewood when General Picton rode up, declaring that the logs had been assigned by the staff to his own 3rd Division. The 95th knew well enough that in former times a feud had built up between Craufurd, in his role of irresistible force, and Picton, acting the part of immovable object. On this occasion, Picton shouted at Simmons to drop the wood, telling him, ‘It is a damned concern to have to follow [the Light Division]. You sweep everything before you.’ General Alten arrived on the scene at this moment, saving the fuel for his own division.
While the soldiers doubtless revelled in the image of the Light Division as peerless scavengers or banditti, it posed no small problem for Lieutenant Colonel Barnard in his command of the Rifles. The last thing he wanted was for the banditry of his wilder soldiers to tarnish the laurels he had won on 21 June. Although some were now beginning to prophesy the end of Bonaparte’s rule, he knew that he would have to use both the carrot and the stick to combat the disorderly tendencies of his men.
At least nobody doubted the Light Division’s marching prowess as it found itself heading in the direction of the River Bidassoa, Spain’s border with France, early in July. General Kempt had been deeply struck by the quality of soldiers under his command, telling Barnard one day on the march, ‘By God I never saw fellows march so well and in such weather and roads too. I will order the Commissary to issue them a double allowance of spirits tonight.’ The Pyrenees loomed ahead of them. French forces remained isolated in two Spanish fortresses: Pampluna inland, at the base of those mountains, and on the coast at San Sebastian. Wellington did not intend to advance into France itself until those places were reduced, and sieges, as he had discovered, could be a tedious and bloody business.
The smoky hovels of the Portuguese frontier were behind them. They knew enough about the French losses against the mighty coalition ranged against Napoleon in Germany to begin hoping that the final battle was under way. The French, though, were determined to exact a high price in blood in the mountain ranges of their southern border.
TWENTY-ONE
The Nivelle
July–November 1813
The Pyrenean mountain air echoed to the sounds of picks, shovels and cursing throughout that late summer of 1813. Local workmen, the National Guard and the army proper had all been pressed into service, creating a line of outposts along the peaks of the western Pyrenees.
Following Vitoria and the collapse of Joseph’s Kingdom of Spain, Napoleon had sacked his brother ignominiously and appointed Marshal Jean de Dieu Soult to reorganise his southern armies. The marshal drew thousands of men into his scheme to turn the mountainous frontier into a solid defensive wall. Dozens of redoubts had been built, usually on heights. These were garnished with artillery pieces, heaved up the slopes with ropes, block and tackle. Once emplaced, these guns were positioned to sweep any likely approach with fire. The strongpoints were sited to allow each to support its neighbours, with others further back to allow a defence in depth.
Less than a month after Vitoria, the Light Division men marched within view of these fortifications and were duly impressed. They knew that if they were called upon to storm the forts, it would be warm work, for a soldier lumbering slowly up a mountainside would be exposed to enemy fire for far longer than those who had broken the French line at San Millan or taken Arinez. One officer of the 43rd wrote home, ‘By throwing up redoubts on the heights one regiment may hold up an entire army.’
There were obvious parallels with the lines of Torres Vedras, which the pick of Napoleon’s generals had not even dared to attack. Perhaps the French saw it as a chance to inflict a Busaco on Wellington too. Attacking this system, though, was a bigger prospect than that ridge in Portugal, for the Bidassoa defence line stretched for forty miles southeast, from the Bay of Biscay into the high mountains. Marshal Soult predicted that his enemy would suffer 25,000 casualties breaking the line. He issued patriotic edicts, exhorting his men to prevent the English setting foot on the ‘sacred soil of France’.
Wellington’s concerns were first and foremost to find his own defensive positions in this mountainous terrain, for he felt it likely that Soult would try some attacks to relieve the French garrisons left behind inside Spain at Pampluna and San Sebastian. Once these places had been reduced by the Allies, Wellington would have to attack the Bidassoa line.
It became readily apparent as the Army adjusted to its new fighting ground that this work would belong largely to the infantry. Many positions could only be reached by shepherds’ tracks, making them impassable to limbered guns, and the steep slopes were too tricky for mounted troops. ‘Our cavalry therefore and I understand a considerable part of our artillery’, wrote Captain Leach, never missing his chance for a put-down, ‘are living in clover in different towns as snug and as far from the possibility of surprise by the enemy as if they were in England.’
British generals soon discovered other qualities to this new arena of war. The Pyrenees could only be crossed by certain passes and the ridges or mountains separating those could make it very hard to move troops to a threatened sector, if the enemy were able to gain a local surprise. Just as movement along the British or French defensive lines could be very tricky, so too were communications.
The Pyrenean battlefield was therefore one in which every commander would have to be on his mettle. It was unfortunate, then, for the Light Division that the idiocies of the Army hierarchy deprived it of General Va
ndeleur, the respected commander of its 2nd Brigade at this time. He was replaced by Major General John Skerrett, to whom the brigade major, Captain Harry Smith of the 95th, instantly took exception. ‘My new General,’ wrote Smith, ‘I soon discovered, was by nature a gallant Grenadier, and no Light Troop officer.’ Smith termed him gallant because Skerrett’s personal courage was never in doubt. But for the 95th it was almost an insult to call someone a grenadier, for they used that term to evoke a picture of pipeclay, parade-ground formalism and pedantry which belonged firmly in the previous century.