First published in Great Britain by
PEN AND SWORD MILITARY
an imprint of
Pen and Sword Books Ltd
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Copyright © Mark S. Thompson, 2015
ISBN 978 1 78346 363 3
eISBN 9781473858428
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Contents
List of Plates
Acknowledgements
Foreword
Introduction
Chapter 1 1808 – Success, Controversy and Disaster
Chapter 2 1809 – Hard Lessons for All
Chapter 3 The Lines of Torres Vedras and the Defence of Portugal
Chapter 4 1810 – A Year of Waiting
Chapter 5 1811 – Goodbye to Lisbon
Chapter 6 1812 – Taking the Frontier
Chapter 7 1812 – Triumph and Failure
Chapter 8 1813 – The Road to France
Chapter 9 1813–14 – Into France
Conclusion
Appendix 1: Commanding Royal Engineers (CRE) with Wellington’s Army, 1808–14
Appendix 2: Engineer Officers who Served in the Iberian Peninsula
Appendix 3: Military Reconnaissance and Surveying
Appendix 4: Military Bridging
Appendix 5: Military Education
Notes
Bibliography
List of Plates
1. Lieutenant Colonel Sir Richard Fletcher RE. Portrait in possession of Royal Engineers Mess and used with their permission.
2. Monument at Alhandra to Sir Richard Fletcher and Neves Costa.
3. Major General John Thomas Jones RE. Bust from the Royal Engineers Museum, Chatham.
4. Lieutenant General Sir Stephen Chapman RE. Portrait in possession of Ronald Brighouse and used with his permission.
5. Field Marshal John Fox Burgoyne RE.
6. Contemporary image of Oporto from Villa Nova by Vivian.
7. Boat bridge across the Douro at Oporto by Landmann.
8. Flying bridge over the Tagus at Villa Velha.
9. Main entrance to Fort La Lippe, Elvas, Portugal.
10. Fort St Lucia, Elvas, Portugal.
11. Fort St Julian, defending the embarkation point that the British army would have used to evacuate Lisbon.
12. Section of the ditch of Fort San Vincente at Torres Vedras.
13. Gun emplacement at Fort 18, Ajuda.
14. Restored military road leading to the great redoubt at Sobral.
15. Drawing of a Portuguese single-arm telegraph, reproduced with the permission of the Municipality of Torres Vedras.
16. Reconstruction of a Portuguese single-arm telegraph.
17. Reconstruction of a British balloon telegraph.
18. Captain Charles Boothby RE, who lost a leg at Talavera.
19. Badajoz castle from Fort San Christobal.
20. The Tagus from the fort at Jerumenha.
21. The castle at Campo Mayor.
22. Defences at Almeida, Portugal.
23. Site of the main Allied breach in the wall at Ciudad Rodrigo.
24. Curtain wall of castle at Badajoz, Spain.
25. Major William Nicholas RE.
26. Bridge over the Guadiana at Badajoz seen from Fort San Christobal.
27. Bridge over the Guadiana at Merida.
28. Bridge over the Tagus at Almaraz.
29. Bridge over the Tormes at Salamanca
30. Bridge over the Tagus at Alcantara.
31. Siege of San Sebastian by Jenkins.
32. Passage of the Bidassoa by Jenkins.
33. Contemporary image of an ox cart and driver.
34. Fragment of memorial to Royal Engineer officers killed at the siege of San Sebastian.
Acknowledgements
Whilst I have always been interested in the Peninsular War, my knowledge of the Royal Engineers, like that of most people, was very limited. My interest stemmed from trying to find a topic for a PhD that had not been covered before. Ten years later, I have my bit of paper but also knowledge that I would like to share with others. There have been challenges in my research, mainly because the Corps is almost invisible in most histories of the period. Where an engineer appears in Wellington’s dispatches it is usually difficult to find any further evidence of the events mentioned. Even the official Corps history, although admittedly written over 100 years ago, has big gaps in its coverage of the Peninsular War. Fortunately we have a number of diaries and letters that we can use to reconstruct the Engineers’ story one piece at a time.
Information on the other units involved in engineering activities is even scarcer. The Royal Staff Corps, the army’s equivalent, has no history and no personal diaries; similarly the engineers of the King’s German Legion. Although almost completely ignored in the Anglo-centric writings on the Peninsular War, the Portuguese and Spanish engineers did play their part. I have not done much better, but have tried to acknowledge their presence where I found it.
In my search to rebuild the engineer’s story, I have had help from many people who have given their time, knowledge and enthusiasm freely and I thank them all. The first and foremost came from a chance encounter at the Royal Engineers’ Museum in 2004. Julia Page, known for her excellent book on Edward Charles Cocks1 and also for many years as an expert tour guide, shared my interest in the Royal Engineers. Later that year, with the battlefield tour group the Forlorn Hope, we spent a week going over the ground of many of the events recounted in this book. She is the only other person in the world with whom I can share my enthusiasm. Julia also planned to write a book on the Corps and had even started it. Unfortunately lack of time has interfered and it is left to me to bring this subject to the reader. This book is as much Julia’s as mine.
It is difficult to know where to start with the others who have helped me. Rory Muir is a hidden presence behind many modern works. His knowledge of the history is unparalleled and I have learnt so much from reading his books and talking to him. The other side of Rory is the man who willingly shares his knowledge with all and is always there when you have a question. He feels more like my next-door neighbour than someone who lives 10,000 miles away. I know that I am not the only person who has benefited from his generosity, so on behalf of us all, thank you.
During my research, I have made a number of visits to the Royal Engineers’ Museum and Library at Chatham. They have met with my many requests w
ith patience and diligence and I would particularly like to thank Rebecca Nash and her team. I would also like to thank serving and retired members of the Corps for their assistance and encouragement, particularly Gerald Napier, Séan Scullion and Martin Stoneham. I first met Gerald Napier when we co-presented a session on the Lines of Torres Vedras and this led to my involvement in the Friends of the Lines of Torres Vedras (please look up our website and Facebook pages). I would also like to thank Nick Lipscombe for his advice and support.
In Portugal there are two people to I particularly need to mention. Firstly, Clive Gilbert, Chairman of the British Historical Society of Portugal. If you are ever visiting Portugal and need a local expert, you need Clive. He is heavily involved in local activities to protect and promote the Lines of Torres Vedras and is a superb interface between Portuguese and British interests. Secondly, I would like to thank Isabel Luna who works on the preservation of the Lines and is particularly heavily involved at Torres Vedras itself. She has been very supportive of my research and particularly in the efforts to identify the names of places and people in the unpublished diary of Edmund Mulcaster. There have been several others in Portugal who have contributed to my research, including José Paulo Berger, João Torres Centeno, Carlos Cunha, Flor Estavo, Moisés Gaudencio, Rui Moura, Jorge Quinta-Nova, Rui Sa Leul and Sergio Tavares. In the same group, although not Portuguese, is Anthony Gray.
From the British Commission for Military History (BCMH), I would particularly like to thank Dick Tennant and John Peaty. We have had a number of healthy debates about the war in general but particularly around bridging and military surveying. It was Dick who invited me to one of their conferences where I found myself speaking at Sandhurst next to the late, great Richard Holmes, an experience I will not forget for many reasons. The battlefield tour with them in 2012 is also a memory I will treasure.
Whilst not a regular contributor myself, I must recommend the Napoleon Series (www.napoleon-series.org) as a tremendous source of information both in the website content, but also the discussion forum. Over the years I have received help from many people but would particularly like to mention Bob Burnham, Howie Muir, Ron McGuigan and Tony Broughton. Bob Burnham and I have also corresponded on military bridging and he has written an excellent chapter on the subject in the book Inside Wellington’s Peninsular Army.2
One constant in my life as a historian has been the presence of the British book dealer Ken Trotman, run by Richard and Roz Brown. I have been buying books from them for over thirty years and many of the books on my shelves came from them. I also owe them special thanks for allowing me to use images from some of their reprints.
I cannot end without giving my thanks to Chris Woolgar and Karen Robson at Southampton University, both for answering my questions and for arranging the Wellington Congress. I also must thank the staff of the British Library, the National Archives and the National Army Museum for their help in providing material for my research.
My final thanks are to my family who have lost me for a second time to Fletcher and his officers. Their understanding when I locked myself away for days on end and over my ‘business’ trips to London, Portugal and Spain have always been met with understanding and patience. This book and the PhD that preceded it are the result of the support of ‘Team Thompson’. The credit for this book should go to you, Trish, my wife and daughters, Ruth and Katherine.
Mark S. Thompson
October 2014
Foreword
It is well over one hundred years since Major General Whitworth Porter included an account of the Peninsular War when writing Volume One of the History of the Corps of Royal Engineers. This book now draws on much new material, not previously available, to tell the story from the perspective of engineer officers and explains how they supported the victories of the Duke of Wellington in the Iberian Peninsula. These officers from the Royal Engineers, never more than fifty at any one time, played a highly significant, but mainly invisible role in supporting Wellington’s army and the operations in Spain and Portugal. They were present at almost every major engagement, but their roles as staff officer, liaison officer, bridge and road builder, and fortifications engineer are not well recognised. A number of them lived to enjoy rank and high reputation, while others died in the breach of a stormed city, leading the infantry into the gap in the enemy’s defences as Sapper officers should. It is now time that all their various contributions are better understood.
Further into the nineteenth century some of these same officers continued their careers in both military and civil roles, to high acclaim. Field Marshal Sir John Burgoyne (the first Royal Engineer to achieve that rank), who served on both Sir John Moore’s and the Duke of Wellington’s staffs, would forty years later advise Lord Raglan in the Crimean War. Another, General Sir Charles Pasley, had been at the Battle of Corunna and would pioneer much-needed improvements in the training of engineer officers before going on to establish at Chatham what is now known as the Royal School of Military Engineering. Others were called upon to oversee a variety of famous civil endeavours. For example, Lieutenant Colonel John By played a major role in the early development of Canada, including the building of the Rideau Canal between Montreal and Kingston in the 1820s – now a World Heritage Site. Indeed, Ottawa, the capital of Canada, was originally called Bytown. Sir Joshua Jebb played a leading role in prison reform and would later become the first Surveyor General of Prisons in 1844. Sir William Reid, who was a Lieutenant at the time of the Peninsular War, became chairman of the committee for the planning of the Great Exhibition in 1851. Others continued the work of their forebears in the Ordnance Survey by conducting survey operations across the British Empire, and many made names for themselves as directors of railway companies and as colonial governors in the West Indies and Australia.
The bi-centenary of the Peninsular War has created renewed interest in the period and I am delighted that we have a new evaluation of the role of Royal Engineer officers, who did much to lay the foundations for the many military and civil engineering feats that were accomplished in the Victorian era. Their legacy to our nation’s history deserves greater recognition.
Lieutenant General Sir Mark Mans KCB CBE DL
Chief Royal Engineer
Introduction
On 27 July 1808, a very wet Royal Engineer officer, Captain Peter Patton, was washed up on the beach at Mondego Bay in Portugal, after his boat capsized whilst trying to ride over the rough Atlantic waves. Fortunately for him and his fellow Engineer passenger, Lieutenant John Neave Wells, there was no lasting injury.1 This was the first step of an officer from the Corps of Royal Engineers in the Peninsula and the reason he was there will come as a surprise to many people. He was not there to conduct a siege, but to undertake a range of tasks for which he had been fully trained but is understood by few today.
The stereotypical view of the engineers as just being employed for sieges is outdated and this book will provide a more balanced description of their role and their contribution to the war. Today, we have a greater emphasis on all the components that make up war. Gone are the descriptions of battles with no consideration of what came before the first shot or after the last. Recently, there have been a number of studies on logistics, the role of the Royal Navy, the effects of political considerations and the impact of other campaigns on the Peninsular War, e.g. the central European campaigns or the War of 1812. One area that has not been looked at for over 100 years is the role of the engineers who supported Wellington in his campaigns in the Iberian Peninsula. This support was provided by a number of different corps. These were the Royal Engineers, the Royal Military Artificers (later to become the Royal Sappers and Miners), the engineers of the Portuguese army, the Spanish army and the King’s German Legion, the Royal Staff Corps and the officers serving with the Quarter Master-General’s department (QMG staff, exploring officers and the Corps of Guides).
This myriad of different units is partly the cause of the confusion about who did what during the war
. Whilst on paper the roles of these units were clear, there was a level of pragmatism in the field, where whoever was available was used. This showed clearly in two particular areas, bridging and mapping. This pragmatism was not always shared or understood at home where inter-service rivalry remained intense. An early example was the engineer Captain Peter Patton being asked to explain why he had jointly signed a survey report with an officer from the Royal Staff Corps, as the Board of Ordnance were not aware of any arrangements for joint working between the different corps. The nonsensical view from home was that each officer should have submitted a separate report.
Whilst this book is primarily about the role of the Corps of Royal Engineers, it will try to put in perspective the valuable contribution made by these other units. It will also focus on the campaigns of the Duke of Wellington and will not cover in detail the role of the Royal Engineers at Cadiz and Gibraltar, nor the east coast operations. This is not to say that these were not important. The constant threat from the two southern strongholds meant the French could never concentrate their forces against Wellington. Similarly, the continued defiance of the Spanish forces, regular and irregular, kept many thousands of French troops tied down and contributed to the massive drain on their resources. The Allied campaigns on the east coast were generally co-ordinated to have some value to Wellington. Even though they were not always successful, they kept the French looking over their shoulders for six years.
The role of an officer in the Royal Engineers was unique in the armed forces at the time. Like their fellow officers in the Royal Artillery, they were not under the command of the army. Their chain of command was entirely separate, reporting through the Board of Ordnance. Additionally, an engineer officer was very different from an artillery officer in that they typically reported to and lived with the senior unit commanders. A lieutenant in the Royal Engineers could receive orders directly from Wellington, a level of exposure that a typical army subaltern would only dream of, or more likely dread.
Wellington’s Engineers: Military Engineering on the Peninsular War 1808-1814 Page 1