by Tom Anderson
A practicable breach was finally made in October, at which point the city was beginning to starve anyway, but it was relieved by a Portuguese attack sallying from Elvas which stormed Bourcier’s siege encampment and spiked many of his precious cannon. Though Bourcier soon rallied his own forces, he recognised the siege was now impracticable and retreated to Mérida for the winter, demonstrating his undiminished skill in generalship by defeating an opportunistic Portuguese attack along the road at Talavera in November. In the aftermath, General Blanco considered honour satisfied and reluctantly agreed to work with the Portuguese, who strengthened their position in the south of Spain by taking Huelva.
The Portuguese had less success in defending Ciudad Rodrigo; it was both a smaller fortress than Badajoz and Devilliers had more cannon than Bourcier. Though the city fought hard, Devilliers made two breaches as early as June and Ciudad Rodrigo was stormed, not without moderate losses on the Franco-Spanish part, on the 24th. Ironically perhaps this served to meld the French and Spanish parts of Devilliers’ army into a single fighting force, a baptism of fire, and they were always the most effective and united of all the Franco-Spanish armies. One of Devilliers’ Spanish subordinates, Colonel Joaquim Segovia, would go on to propagate a family synonymous with such unity. However, any further advance into Portugal was halted by the presence of the Portuguese fortress city of Almeida on the other side of the border. As Peter IV had hoped, taking the Spanish fortresses meant that the Franco-Spanish first had to retake them before then facing the original Portuguese line of defence. Devilliers tried a second siege, but was unable to take the city before winter set in, and his troops retreated to Ciudad Rodrigo.
However, after the initial slowdown caused by facing Cuesta, Ballesteros’ army in Galicia succeeded in defeating Vieira’s at Lugo and Ourense in July and October respectively. The Franco-Spanish, scenting a Portuguese defeat, pursued Vieira’s retreating army all the way to Vigo, but arrived too late; Vieira’s forces were evacuated by sea by the Portuguese Navy, saving an army from destruction. Ballesteros and Lenoir complained to Drouet, who in turn complained to Lisieux, about the lack of any French or indeed Spanish naval presence. But Lisieux refused to unveil the new secret French steam fleet under construction at Toulon, Marseilles and Bordeaux until the time was right, and had requisitioned much of the Felipista Spanish sail fleet for France. For what reason, only time would tell… but in the short run, it meant the Portuguese possessed an advantage that, realistically, they should never have had. Soon realising the enemy’s lack of naval forces, the reckless Peter IV reacted by ordering amphibious descents on Spanish coastal cities. In one particularly filmish [cinematic] strike in February 1805, a Portuguese squadron bombarded San Sebástian in the Basque lands – which, according to Lisieux’s redrawing of the borders, were now French – landed troops and stole the contents of the city’s mint. Lisieux angrily allowed parts of the Spanish fleet, often now led by a French-dominated officer corps, to defend against the Portuguese, but the damage was done.
1805 saw Ballesteros win important victories in Galicia and northern Portugal, defeating Vieira’s rebuilt army at Ponte de Lima and threatening Oporto by June. But on all other fronts the Franco-Spanish position began to collapse. Lisieux had always seen the Spanish front as a sideshow, and now that Spain was subdued, he cared little for Portugal, seeing their naval descents as pinpricks. Portugal might be dealt with in due course, but as a minor irritation. He knew the three countries that had to be taken out if France was to have her 25 years of unmolested peace his plan required, and that had to be the top priority. Drouet was always hampered by the fact that Lisieux kept trying to withdraw French troops from Spain virtually as soon as Philip VII had surrendered. Thus 1805 saw the collapse of what had been a fairly successful operation, with the Portuguese retaking Ciudad Rodrigo and open Carlista sympathies spreading everywhere. Drouet sought to regroup Bourcier’s and Devilliers’ Lisieux-stripped armies into one strong force to strike Portugal in the south and roll the country up in cooperation with Ballesteros in the north, ignoring the fortress cities and accepting the ensuing logistics problems. This strategy might, perhaps, have worked; but at this point an unexpected player entered the fray.
In October 1805, capitalising on an earlier attack on Hoche’s exiled Genoese fleet in Mataró in June, Horatio Nelson and Prince Mario Pignatelli Strongoli landed in Valencia. Nelson commanded the Neapolitan fleet, reinforced by Venetian exiles, while Pignatelli led an army that, though it had a Neapolitan core, included Tuscans and members of the Papal States’ small army. Indeed, this was the first military force for centuries that could lay claim to the name Italian. And the world wondered.
Drouet was placed in an unenviable position. Lisieux remained unconvinced that Naples was a serious threat, any more than Portugal. Some biographers believe he was taking laudanum extensively at this point, though revisionist historians have castigated this as the usual visceral popular hatred of L’Administrateur that prevents any objective analysis. In any case, it seems that Lisieux had become convinced that all the Latin countries would naturally fall into line as soon as he had defeated France’s last serious Germanic rivals. So Drouet received no more troops; indeed, the French withdrawal barely slowed.
And Naples was a problem. It was easy enough to rouse the Spanish people against a Portuguese enemy, especially one which had invaded pre-emptively – the two countries were traditional, historical rivals. Naples was different. It had been tied to Spain for hundreds of years, minus the brief interruption between the First War of Supremacy and the First War of the Polish Succession. It was ruled by Charles VIII and VI, uncle of both claimant Kings of Spain. Thus when Pignatelli captured Valencia and declared that Charles VIII of Naples, and Charles VI of Sicily, was also Charles IV of Spain,[29] it was taken seriously by more people than the French had expected.
Drouet saw the Neapolitans as a bigger threat than the Portuguese, and so stripped the western front for troops to throw against Pignatelli’s army, hoping to hurl them back into the Mediterranean Sea. But though the French won a tactical victory at Albacete in February 1806, and drove the Neapolitans back, it was a strategic loss. The Neapolitans had been successful enough to rouse the countryside in their favour, with their ‘English Generals’ being exotic rather than heretical. For Horatio Nelson and Sir John Acton, like Nelson’s friend Leo Bone before them, briefly discarded their navies to serve as land commanders under Pignatelli. Tuscany also contributed General Paolo Wiesenbach, the Tuscan-born son of a Hapsburg official recruited from Austria, and though the Neapolitan-led forces remained numerically inferior to the Franco-Spanish as a whole, the continuous pressure from the Portuguese in the west meant that Drouet could not concentrate his forces.
Ballesteros was driven from northern Portugal, after briefly taking Oporto, in March 1806. With assistance from the Portuguese Navy, Vieira then took Cadiz in an amphibious descent and further increased Portuguese influence throughout Spain. Recognising that his position was melting down, Drouet withdrew his remaining armies to Madrid, holding to the Revolutionary doctrine of ‘to hold the heart is to hold the nation’. He sought to recruit more Spanish levies in the face of desertion to the Portuguese and especially the Neapolitans, and appealed to Lisieux for more troops.
But even in these straits, L’Administrateur did not listen. His plans were near fruition, and he would not be distracted by such petty complaints.
Interlude #8: Goede Hoop
From: “The History of Southern Africa: Volume II; 1600-1845” (Henry Watson; 1965)—
The Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie, the United Dutch East India Company or VOC, had controlled the Cape since Jan van Riebeeck landed there in 1652. They settled in the Cape, fought and bartered with the Khoikhoi, and early on it proved to be a profitable trading base. But by 1715, the Company stopped the colony's policy of open immigration, monopolised trade, and combined the administrative, legislative and judicial powers into one body. The leaders told the farm
ers what crops to grow, demanded a large percentage of every farmer's harvest, and frequently harassed the colonists. This tended to discourage further development of industry and enterprise. From these roots sprung a dislike of orderly government, and a libertarian view-point that has characterised the "Boertrekkers" or Dutch farmers for many generations.[30]
Despite these restrictions, the population in the lands under the rule of the VOC expanded exponentially. The population grew from a paltry 3,000 Europeans in 1715 to over 35,000 Europeans in 1805 and continued to grow significantly. This encouraged the Governors to further restrict the Boertrekkers’ expansion.
Seeking largely to escape the oppression of the VOC, the farmers trekked farther and farther from the seat of government. The VOC, in order to control these emigrants, established a magistracy at Swellendam in 1745. However, this did not halt further emigration or hostility among those already in the countryside. By 1805, the heavily taxed Boertrekkers of the frontier districts, who furthermore received no protection against raids by their African neighbours, expelled the officials of the VOC. The Boertrekkers established an independent government at Swellendam.
These revolutionaries founded what they called the Afrikaan Germanic Republic, influenced by both the UPSA and Revolutionary France’s Jacobin ideology in their motives. However, they took an even harsher stance against the natives than the VOC did, as most Boertrekkers held slaves at the time. They advocated the expulsion, execution or enslavement of all Khoikhoi from their Republic because of the damage they had done to their cattle farms. This policy was justified by the Boertrekkers as they were heavily influenced by the racialist philosophies of Sijbren Vorderman, founder of the Dutch school of Linnaean Racialism. The Swellendam government also established Afrikaans as their official language; the first time it was recognised as a separate tongue from Dutch. They attracted popular support among much of the Boertrekker population and encouraged an independent spirit to protect their homeland by invading and driving out the VOC. They began to form an army to besiege Kaapstad [Cape Town].
The leader of this Boertrekker militia was a farmer named Hermanus Potgieter and by the time he had collected his army of over five thousand men, he had become the de facto leader of the AGR. In 1807, he led this army to take Kaapstad and remove VOC from power. After two weeks of marching and pillaging, the Boers reached the city of Kaapstad and surrounded the city, not allowing any shipments of food or water to go in or out. Potgieter wanted to starve the city into submission and force the VOC to allow them independence. In fact, the leader of the militia did not know how fortunate his timing was. The Governor of the Cape Colony, Cornelisz Jacob van de Graaff, had just seen off the last Dutch ship in their normally heavy garrison because of the naval build up of that year (q.v.). Relief and a possible counterattack by VOC troops would not come for over two months.
Van de Graaff, in those trying weeks of siege, instituted an extremely draconian policy to ration food supplies and kill any living thing worth eating in order to survive. Of course, in keeping with his policy of cronyism and corruption, most of the food was reserved for himself, his friends and his troops. This only fueled the flames of discontent. By the end of the first month, food was running dangerously low for the citizens of Kaapstad and dissent was growing. The Governor was forced to imprison and torture anyone who advocated surrender, stating that most of his subjects were likely to be massacred by the army outside if they did give in. Outside, the Boertrekkers themselves were subject to disease and low supplies as well. Near the end of the two months and running out of options, Potgieter ordered a final assault to take the city.
The weakened armies fought street to street inside Kaapstad. It seemed as though the Boers were inching their way toward capturing Van de Graaff when the VOC fleet arrived with massive reinforcements. They decisively routed the Boertrekker armies within Kaapstad and regained control over the entire Cape Colony. The VOC troops captured Potgieter and hanged him, as well as convicting many other Boertrekker leaders. They also established a permanent military presence at Swellendam, preventing any further Boertrekker unrest in that region. The dream of a free Boertrekker state was dead for the moment, but it is interesting to consider how an Afrikaan Germanic Republic in southern Africa would have developed independently if the tides of history had been different. Even today the descendants of the Boertrekkers regard Potgieter as a hero and a martyr for their nationalism.
Surprisingly, the Cape Colony experienced little loss in population and actually enjoyed a rapid growth in prosperity after the Boertrekker Rebellion of 1807. This was mostly due to massive reforms put into place following an internal investigation ordered by the VOC’s leadership, the Heeren XVII.[31] Governor Van de Graaff was removed from his post due to his draconian policies leading up to the rebellion. He was replaced by the more amicable Governor Piet van Herwijnen who would remove many of the extraneous, arbitrary rules set in place by the previous administration. This caused many of the grievances that the Boertrekkers had with the government to dissipate for a time. The Cape also enjoyed a steady stream of immigrants from the Netherlands, but also increasingly from Flanders.
The early 1810s marked the first large Xhosa raids on Boertrekker soil and the discovery of the Kingdom of the Sotho, further solidifying the ever-expanding Boertrekkers’ sense of nationalism and racial superiority. Nevertheless, the Cape colonists emerged from their time of troubles just as strong as they had entered it…
…While the Cape was experiencing much unrest and rebellion, the British became another force to be reckoned with in Southern Africa. This was the brainchild of the British East India Company, who – following the Anglo-Dutch treaty of 1805 (securing Dutch control of the Cape Colony) – needed a resupply port in between the Company’s possessions in Bengal and the British hegemony in the Atlantic. After several survey missions, the BEIC decided to send a mission to set up a trading base in the Natal. This region was originally discovered by the famous Portuguese explorer Vasco De Gama in 1497, but the Portuguese elected to put their bases further north, in Delgola Bay and the Zambezi River. Therefore the gap in between Cape Colony and Portuguese Mozambique became a prime location for a potential British settlement. With the approval of the BEIC’s Board of Directors, funding was authorised to settle Natal.
A fleet of five ships first landed in Natal Bay on November 16th, 1805, founding a port there. Another three ships landed in St. Lucia Bay just three months later and founded a second port. These centres of trade and shipping would prove to be very important, becoming some of the biggest BEIC bases on the Indian Ocean. By 1811 they were commanding over £1.2 million in trade in a single year (though of course the economic chaos of the 1810s makes it difficult to put a precise value on the pound of that time). The BEIC bases in Port Natal and Port St. Lucia were proving to be worth the investment and providing excellent competition to the Cape. But the largest problem the British faced was not a group of cattle herders or hunter-gatherers like the Dutch faced in the nomadic herdsman of the Khoikhoi, but a very large civilisation with remarkable organisation: the Matetwa Empire.
The Matetwa Empire was a confederation of many Nguni tribes, eventually numbering over 300,000 people, encompassing territory from the Limpopo River to the Maloti Mountains.[32] When the British began to open up diplomatic discourse, the king of the Matetwa received them on remarkably good terms. The king, named Dingiswayo, was in the process of reforming his Empire after a short exile in Mozambique taught him about European ways of organising their societies. The food the Portuguese were now trading with him allowed for an explosion in the Matetwa population. Because of these ideas and changes, he began to reform his army into a centralised command which would be headed up by his most trusted aide, Shaka.[33]
A newcomer to the Matetwa Empire, Shaka quickly advanced up the ranks and befriended the king. His reforms to the army only augmented Dingiswayo’s changes. Shaka introduced new weapon techniques, like the very long spears and large shields that a
re so iconic of Matetwa culture today. These new battle tactics, organisation and weapons would be tested when Shaka ordered an invasion of the Swazi Kingdom and the Gaza Kingdom. After several battles using the hitherto unseen tactics of encirclement, Shaka captured and forcibly admitted the tribes into the Matetwa Empire. Dingiswayo used this war to his advantage and further consolidated the different tribes into a more homogenous structure. Ultimately, by 1810 the Matetwa Empire was the strongest native force in all of southern Africa.
Some of the most important information on the Matetwa was documented by the BEIC pioneer Thomas Grenville, who led an expedition up the Tugela River in central Natal in 1811. Grenville wished to set up the first trading post in the hinterlands to trade with the Africans there and transfer the profits to the coast. His expedition moved through the rock-filled river toward the Maloti Mountains in their now famous trek when (as depicted in the famous painting by Sir Winston Roberts in 1871) they were discovered by a Matetwa patrol. The Matetwa escorted them to the royal Boma where King Dingiswayo resided. Grenville managed to record everything from their voyage into the Matetwa Empire in a journal which was later published as a bestseller in both America and Britain.