Can No One Win Battles if I'm Not There

by Geoffrey Watson

  I have been working with Fernando Gonçalves long enough now, to know that you shall not get a more accurate assessment, even from one of the French generals.” He smiled at the look of gratitude Gonçalves shot at him.

  “My own judgement is that the French are going to have to retire into Spain as soon as our army comes up. They need re-equipping and rest and reinforcements before they can fight properly again. I do not know how soon that shall be, but we could not do it in less than six months.”

  Roffhack pulled a face. “Do any of you gentlemen have any disagreement with what Heinz has said?”

  There was a general shaking of heads. “Very well then. I can find no fault with the reasoning at all. With Fernando’s permission, in the morning we shall send Lieutenant Pom and his platoon back to inform Lord Wellington of the perceived situation.”

  It did not happen! In the morning, the French were on the move again. If they had been moving east, it would have been assumed that Hagen was prescient. Not a bit of it! They were moving south into the mountains, in the general direction of Castelo Branco.

  It was a complete mystery. Pom didn’t leave until the day after and all he was then able to report was the simple fact that the enemy was acting completely irrationally.

  For once, Roffhack felt that he was quite out of his depth. The only possible explanation that occurred to him for the French move, was to make him look foolish in front of his men for what he had said. He grimaced. Even to think along those lines was to become more irrational than the French.

  He asked Gonçalves and his Vespãos to follow the enemy and send a report back to him every day. He sent Captain Müller and C Squadron to Guarda and Captain Werther and D Squadron to Celorico. They were both instructed to seal off the towns, take some prisoners to try and discover what was happening and determine what garrisons, if any, had been left behind.

  Having got his command organised with something to occupy them all, he literally sat down with Heinz Hagen to try and make some sense of it all.

  Together, they went over everything they knew. Forty thousand French, having force-marched across the mountains for the last hundred miles, arrive at their destination; two towns with garrisons holding barely enough food to feed themselves.

  They would surely have consumed everything available within twenty-four hours? They would be hungry, exhausted and lacking footwear and clothing, uniforms in tatters and with half the cavalry on foot for lack of horses.

  The pursuing British army had been left far behind. They couldn’t keep up without abandoning their own baggage and equipment and in any case had run out of food.

  The French were in no condition to fight. They were in no condition even to stand and fight behind good defences, without daily rations for forty thousand men.

  None of their options was attractive, but the less suicidal involved retreat eastwards to the fortresses of Almeida or Ciudad Rodrigo, or even to a defensive line along the precipitous banks of the River Côa, where supplies of food could be sent in from Spain.

  Instead, Masséna had taken his remaining, starving men and headed south through the eastern part of the Serra da Estrela, vaguely in the direction of Marshal Soult and his army, more than a hundred miles away around Badajoz.

  It was unbelievable enough to be part of a romantic classical fable, with an army of doomed and forgotten heroes marching off together through the gates of Hades; but it made no sense in the real world, in which Roffhack had to keep reminding himself he was living.

  Two days later, Lieutenant Pom returned and was sent after the Vespãos. Two more days and Lord Wellington arrived and accepted the surrender of the remaining garrisons of Celorico and Guarda. Most of them were happy to be marched off into captivity if it meant that they would be fed regularly.

  The commander of the garrisons finally solved Roffhack’s mystery for him. Masséna was desperate to recover some part of his reputation. He intended to march south to join Marshal Soult, jointly to strike across the Alentejo to Lisbon.

  Apparently his commanders had protested the futility of the idea. Marshal Ney had refused to obey and was summarily relieved of his command and sent back to France. The Army marched south.

  Ney was right. Late next day Pom returned with the news that the French army had ground to a halt and was in the process of reversing its progress and coming back north.

  Wellington spread his forces to take them in the flank and the army prepared for an accounting.

  * * *

  Lord George Vere smiled at the recollection of his last meeting with Lord Wellington. The commander-in-chief had detached Marshal Beresford and a couple of divisions to go to the rescue of the Spaniards at Badajoz.

  He had hoped to give the command to Rowland (Daddy) Hill, but he was ill with fever and Beresford was the most senior commander available.

  Beresford was a brilliant administrator. He had taken the hopelessly demoralised Portuguese army and given the rank of Marshal, had purged it of its weak and corrupt leadership, rebuilding it into an army that Wellington could use with confidence alongside his British regiments. In effect, he had doubled the strength of Wellington’s army.

  As a general in the field, he was known to be indecisive, somewhat dilatory and ultra cautious, but no one else was available and Beresford was marching to the relief of Badajoz with two divisions and a cavalry brigade.

  The expedition did not start until Masséna had begun to retreat and the news of the rout of Mendizabal’s Spanish army on the heights above the River Gévora, close to Badajoz, came almost at once. Shortly afterwards it was learned that Badajoz itself had capitulated tamely to Soult, who in addition had taken the Portuguese fortress towns of Elvas and Campo Maior and the Spanish towns of Alburquerque and Olivenza, all within twenty miles of Badajoz.

  Vere, with A and B Squadrons of the German battalion, the Hornissen, was now riding with new orders from Lord Wellington for Beresford to attack the French immediately, having gathered as many as he could find of the beaten Spanish army into his force.

  It was the context of his own orders that caused Vere to smile. Wellington was convinced that putting the Hornets under the command of any of his generals would be a recipe for disaster. Disaster for the Hornets in particular, as none of the commanders would know how to deploy them.

  He had therefore despatched Vere and two squadrons under the aegis of the Naval Brigade – the Admiralty paid their wages – and sent them on a particular service, which was the standard Admiralty phrasing for detached service. He urged Vere to assess the situation around Badajoz and use his best endeavours to assist, support and advise all the allied forces in the area. A separate despatch to Beresford urged him to pay the greatest attention to any intelligence proffered by Colonel Lord Vere.

  In Vere’s opinion, it would do little to endear the Hornets to the Marshal, but it did give them the essential independence they needed and might contribute to neutralising the preponderance of sheer military talent that the French always seemed to possess.

  Marshal Beresford might possibly have been better disposed, but for once, Vere’s timing was uncharacteristically lacking. The Hornets came up with the army at the very moment of the first contact with the enemy.

  Beresford had been approaching Campo Maior expecting to have to invest and capture it before moving on to Badajoz.

  Instead, he surprised three or four regiments of infantry and cavalry, completing the destruction of the defences before retiring on Badajoz.

  The French were certainly surprised, but had spotted the British columns well in time for them to abandon the town and start a controlled and almost leisurely withdrawal over the seven or eight miles back to Badajoz.

  Marshal Beresford had just despatched the allied cavalry under the command of General Long to chase the escaping regiments when Vere rode up with Wellington’s despatches and two squadrons of Hornets.

  To be fair, Beresford was far too busy to be concerned with anything other than the immediate job in han
d. Vere was only able to approach him and hand over the despatches to be read later. He was greeted perfunctorily, the despatches accepted and he was ordered to take his men to report to General Long for further instructions.

  It was no time to point out that the Hornets were not Beresford’s to command and Vere moved off to speak to the aide who was now clutching the despatches.

  “Make sure that the Marshal sees Lord Wellington’s orders as soon as he has time! Be careful to point out that my squadrons are on a particular service, but that we shall be happy to ask General Long if he needs any help!” He nodded amiably to the puzzled young man and cantered off with his squadrons to catch up with the cavalry.

  The French had moved quickly when they had first seen Beresford’s army approaching and were now half way back to Badajoz, with Long’s cavalry only just closing the gap and causing the French commander to halt and form his infantry regiment into a square to receive them.

  He had three small cannon in front of the square, firing canister into the allied cavalry formations and had deployed his own cavalry with his hussars on one flank and dragoons on the other.

  The Hornets arrived just in time to see Long’s regiment of light dragoons charging straight into the outer one of the French dragoon regiments. With the clattering of steel on steel and yells and screams, they drove the outnumbered dragoon regiment from the field.

  A French cavalry regiment would have then regrouped and driven into the remaining horsemen, but the light dragoons were wild with excitement and could be seen disappearing into the distance still at the gallop, in pursuit.

  Long had just ordered a regiment of Portuguese dragoons to engage the French Hussars when the Hornets cantered past. Vere had assessed most of the options as he drew near. It was painfully obvious that all Long had to do was to continue to threaten the square to force the French to remain stationary until Beresford’s infantry could come up in overwhelming numbers. He didn’t need any help for that.

  Making sure that his men were well on the way past, Vere reined in beside Long. “Glad to see that you don’t need our help here, General. I shall take the Hornets and try to rescue those excited idiots who seem determined to bring the entire cavalry reserve of Badajoz around our ears.”

  He put his heels to his horse’s flanks and as he was cantering away he heard a furious bellow from Long. “You will do no such thing! You will put your men under my command and help to destroy that square…!”

  Making no acknowledgement that he had heard, he caught up with the Hornets as they headed after the light dragoons, keeping well away from the French square. It was just as Long sent the Portuguese dragoons charging into the hussars on the far side.

  Unfortunately, the Portuguese approached the square far too closely in order to get at the hussars. A full volley from all the muskets on one flank caught them as they were passing and brought down many of the horses and riders. The remainder of the charge was at best half-hearted and the Imperial hussars were having much the better of the argument when the Hornets looked back.

  Vere caught up with them. He was relieved that he had taken his men away from the action. Long had apparently managed to squander two of his regiments in the last twenty minutes, but Vere was sure that he still had enough horse soldiers left to keep the French from escaping. There was certainly no need to involve the Hornets in such a simple, basic, mopping up exercise.

  The towers of Badajoz quickly came into view about two miles away. He halted the squadrons and called Captains Weiss and Fischer to him on a small prominence, from where they could see all the activity right up to the town walls.

  Their glasses showed exactly what he had been expecting. Regiments of horsemen were pouring out of the gates and moving in their direction. In between, and over a mile away, the pursuers and pursued were each coming together in small groups as the red-coated British realised that their roles were now reversed.

  Small parties of men; weary, red coated men on exhausted mounts were walking their horses in retreat. Having galloped hard for over four miles, a walk was the most they could get from their mounts without killing them.

  At the moment, fortunately for them, the survivors of the dragoons were unable to do other than walk their own horses and the cavalrymen leaving the town were advancing only cautiously until they could be certain exactly what they were facing.

  That situation could not last long and then the redcoats would be pursued in their turn, but by overwhelming numbers riding fresh horses. The odds were well and truly on the whole regiment being wiped out.

  “Gentlemen! Oblige me by moving at a canter to where this valley is narrowest. Almost a mile from here, I estimate. B Squadron shall then dismount and assume skirmish order. A Squadron shall collect the horses and move back, remaining mounted in support. Let all the redcoats through the line and discourage the French pursuit. All we have to hope is that our idiot horsemen can stagger back that far.”

  By the time they had cantered urgently down and reached the narrowest point at about a hundred yards wide and B Squadron had deployed; more accurately scattered themselves in haste; across the whole of the area, the ground in front of them had filled up with the remnants of the 13th Light Dragoons. Their horses were staggering in the last stages of exhaustion and between a quarter and half a mile behind them were several hundred mixed chasseurs, hussars and dragoons, cantering forward in quite a relaxed fashion, casually sabring any redcoat whose mount could not rise above a slow trot.

  There was a brief relief to many of the floundering troopers when the French noticed the brown-clad line of Hornets stretched across the slope before them. The relief continued for as long as it took for bugle calls to bring the various regiments together into massed troops preparing to charge as a unit and clear away the pathetic, thin, colourless line of horsemen, having the temerity to challenge the might of the Imperial Cavalry.

  While they got themselves organised into troops and squadrons, the remnants of the light dragoons passed through the prone ranks of B Squadron. They began to filter through the double line of A Squadron in echelon, being urged on by Vere and Weiss, who wanted a clear field of fire for their men.

  The last of them was still moving through as the three separate masses of horsemen started to trot. Vere was sitting in the centre of A Squadron with his glass trained on a small group of senior officers that had come together with the arrival of a highly decorated uniform; possibly the commanding officer of all the cavalry in Badajoz.

  He watched a sudden flurry of activity that was followed immediately by a trio of bugle calls that stopped the French squadrons in their tracks. He heard an explosive “Gott in Himmel!” from Hans Weiss, some yards to his left and saw Captain Fischer rise to his feet in the middle of B Squadron, turn toward him and hold his hands out, palms upward asking a silent question.

  The French, meanwhile, still in three squadron-sized groups, spread their formations to present three fronts of thirty to forty men across, three or four ranks deep, sitting still, waiting for orders.

  The only thought that made any sense to Vere was that these cavalrymen had come up from the area of Cadiz and Seville, where Sir Joshua and Hamish MacKay had been enticing them into ambush after ambush. Perhaps they recognised the buckskin-coloured uniforms and decided that discretion was far more attractive than blind valour?

  Whatever the reason, the enemy was now resting in line, between three and four hundred yards away and Vere was carrying the only rifle among two hundred and fifty breech-loading muskets. The only weapon that could guarantee a killing shot at that distance.

  He was now faced with a stand-off situation. Vere could be remarkably patient at times and had no basic objection to stand-offs. This, though, was a stand-off initiated by the French and he was acutely aware that if Beresford and Long made a sow’s ear over the confrontation at Campo Maior, the Hornets could find themselves trapped between thousands of retreating French and half the garrison of Badajoz.

  He looked at the ra
nks of horsemen and made his decision. The target was big enough to suffer damage from the shotgun effect of volley fire by the Hornets, if both squadrons were in action.

  “Get your squadron dismounted, Hans! Target is that line of cavalry. Wait for my signal!”

  A Squadron spread themselves out directly behind B Squadron and Vere blew a long blast on his whistle to alert both squadrons. His executive order was given by two, short, sharp blasts and both squadrons opened a volley-firing sequence of sixty shots every three or four seconds.

  Their muskets were only modified French carbines, but Roberto had straightened the bore and increased it to 0.70 inch, providing an accurately cast ball that let none of the charge escape. The muzzle velocity was enough to kill at four hundred yards and it was only the lack of spin that caused the ball to wander slightly at over two hundred.

  On this occasion it didn’t matter that they were not rifles. A horse and rider was a large target and four hundred of them was an enormous target. Horses and men collapsed all the way along the line and Vere’s Ferguson brought down one of the brightly dressed senior officers in the command group over five hundred yards away.

  No Hornet fired more than two shots, but in half a minute, five hundred shots had been fired in eight volleys. Over half of the enemy line was out of action, with either the horse or the rider dead or wounded. The rest of them were fleeing, before Vere’s whistle brought an end to the slaughter.

  The Hornets mounted again and advanced in column of troops. The French didn’t wait for more slaughter and retired towards the town, leaving their casualties and riderless horses.

  There was little that the Hornets could do to help and the whole responsibility was taken out of their hands when they realised that Beresford and Long had indeed let the Campo Maior garrison escape. They were suddenly aware that a large body of troops was deploying behind them. A rapid collecting together of fifty or so unwounded horses and the Hornets disappeared into the hills.