Can No One Win Battles if I'm Not There

by Geoffrey Watson

  They only had time for two shots each, but there were only sixty of them carrying carbine muskets and they certainly proved the point that they were lethal enough at quarter of a mile, when shooting almost straight down.

  The voltigeurs couldn’t hope to be effective uphill until they were much much closer, so they were using the hill as a training exercise. Working in pairs, one of them would scramble uphill and rest in a kneeling position, theoretically to cover his shooting partner, who would scramble past and shoot in turn.

  When MacKay blew his whistle, there were two hundred kneeling targets for Roberto’s carbines and at least thirty of them were knocked flat in the first split volley.

  Out of four hundred voltigeurs, thirty was not significant and they did not change their drill. The next split volley easily accounted for thirty more and suddenly the idea of kneeling and pretending to shoot lost all its appeal. The French skirmishers went to ground and fired their muskets. It didn’t matter that there was no chance of hitting the enemy; it reassured them and made them feel that all was not just one way traffic.

  All that could now be seen of the voltigeurs was their heads and distinctive shakos. The Hornets turned their riflemen loose on them as well and suddenly all of them were in flight down the hill and across the river. There was hardly an officer to stop them. They were always the first to be singled out for death.

  With the skirmishers fled, the four columns claimed the undivided attention of the Hornets. They were advancing in loose column order, climbing steadily, ten nominal files in each column. Forty walking targets with so many men behind them that it was hardly possible to miss.

  Each company selected its targets and fired aimed shots, starting with volleys of forty at a time, every seven or eight seconds. After thirty seconds, with some pairs shooting and reloading more quickly than others, the volleys became a continuous crash of discharges.

  It wasn’t a contest. The French couldn’t return fire because they were too far away and needed to fire uphill. It was sheer unemotional slaughter and they found they had no stomach for it.

  Within a minute, the four columns were streaming back across the river, leaving four piles of bodies to mark the position they had reached before the hail of bullets cut down the leading files.

  There was dead silence, or what felt like dead silence, while the powder smoke blew away and the Hornets fussed with their weapons, making sure that they were ready for any further challenges.

  MacKay moved his glass over the scene below. It looked to be utter chaos. He could see surviving officers hitting their men with the flat of their swords to try and restore some sort of order. The men were not accepting their authority willingly.

  It wasn’t that there weren’t plenty of men left to try again. It was the complete massacre of all those that had been closest to the merciless fusillade. Most of the men accepted willingly that on occasions the were expected to risk their lives for France and their Emperor, but this wasn’t risking death, it was a dead certainty and they wanted nothing to do with it.

  He put his glass back in his pocket and looked at Gonçalves, who was shouting something from the top of the slope and gesturing for him to climb to the rim once more.

  Trotting to the top, he looked to where Gonçalves was pointing and saw two clouds of dust being sent up by two sets of horsemen approaching at the gallop. The first, small troop had to be the escort sent with Pom. The second group, when he put his glass on them, was a squadron or more of the feared Polish Lancers. This was something of a surprise as he hadn’t heard of any in Masséna’s army and had not seen any joining from the Army of the North.

  He yelled at Gonçalves to get Dodds and his company back on the plateau and trotted back to the rim to get Davison to spread C Company out, taking the place of Percy Tonks, who brought D Company to extend the line of Vespãos all the way round the horses.

  Pom and his escort reined in and he threw himself off his horse, looking for MacKay. He was running and pulling off his gaudy shoulder knots at the same time. “You shall get no support from General Craufurd or General Houston, Sir. Seventh Division is now deployed in squares and holding its own, but is on the other side of the river Tourões. The Light Division is on the near bank of the river and slowly retiring north to join the army again. The enemy cavalry is loose everywhere between them and those lancers have been chasing us for half a mile. They were coming this way to investigate the sound of firing, which could be heard over a mile away.”

  He delivered all this without drawing breath and now paused and breathed deeply, waiting for MacKay, who grinned at him. “Well done, Li! Now go and report to Major Gonçalves. He shall give you something useful to do until we have seen off these Poles. Be ready to get back on your horse and report to Lord Wellington as soon as you can leave in safety.”

  The lancers had halted two or three hundred yards away and MacKay could see one or two spyglasses trained on him. He realised that this was literally so, as he and Pom were the only two standing figures to be seen, other than a large herd of more than four hundred horses.

  It was certainly not a sight that any cavalry squadron should expect to find on a battlefield, or anywhere else for that matter. The lancers had earned a reputation for reckless bravery and total aggression, but they were showing an amazing degree of caution in the face of something that was strange.

  They had doubtless seen men running back from the edge of the plateau as they approached and this would explain the large number of horses hobbled and grazing so contentedly. What it didn’t explain was where all the men had gone. The answer had to be that they were over the rim or skirmishing, but cavalry would surely not lower themselves to that sort of menial activity, would they?

  It was perhaps fortuitous that there was a renewed outbreak of firing from over the edge of the plateau. The French officers must have persuaded their men to have another try, maybe after seeing so many Hornets leaving to deal with another threat?

  It meant that MacKay was fighting his own battle on two fronts, but a quick look round convinced him that Gonçalves and Tonks had more than enough strength to deal with the lancers. He loped back to the rim to find out what was going on.

  What he saw was impressive. The French did not normally have specialist light companies in their regiments, relying on their regiments of tirailleurs and voltigeurs to do the job. The chasseurs à pied could also be called upon at need.

  Now they had sent the voltigeurs back up the hill and strengthened them with five or six hundred infantry of the line, stripped to basic equipment of muskets, bayonets and ammunition pouches. They were spread out in a mass of attacking pairs of men over a front of only two hundred yards and the rest of the infantry was waiting on the other side of the river to see the outcome of the attack.

  Sensibly, Captain Paul Davison had spread his men out, but only so far as to cover the area of attack. His men, working with their shooting partners, were now keeping up a continuous fire on the unfortunates below them. The French were loading, scrambling forward and lying prone. As they then fired their muskets, their partners scrambled upward and also lay prone, ready to repeat the process.

  The Hornets watched for the cloud of powder smoke and had their weapons trained on the immediate area, where the partner scrambled to his feet and, like as not, received a ball in his body before he could complete the drill.

  The whole mass of men was already wavering when MacKay turned his attention back to the lancers. They had come to a decision. Two troops were swinging away to circle round and move in from the west. The remainder was spreading outwards in troops, preparing to advance straight toward the horses, impaling any skirmisher they found on the way.

  MacKay strolled toward the centre of the defended area and watched the detachment trotting around and leaving a ‘safe’ distance of a hundred yards between themselves and the men that they assumed were guarding the horses.

  D Company was actually twenty-five yards nearer than they imagined and the two
troops were only trotting into position with lances held high, before they turned to couch them for the charge.

  Two lines of lancers trotting across their front at point blank range was surely not sporting, but the Hornets had heard stories about the utterly ruthless Polish Lancers and their dreaded ‘pig stickers’ and were not inclined to be sporting.

  Two shots, almost certainly from Percy Tonks and Sergeant Major Dai Evans, emptied the saddles of the two troop commanders. This was followed immediately by sixty more from the first shooters of the company pairs and both troops ceased to exist. Only half the company had fired their weapons and no more than half a dozen men were still mounted and then only because some of their unfortunate friends had taken more than one ball. They were left untouched to get away as quickly as they could. Captain Tonks had made his point.

  The main body had been waiting for them to get into position so that they could move in together and were horrified witnesses to the death of fifty or more of their comrades. If the blow had been a little less total, MacKay reckoned that they might have been in motion by now, thirsting for revenge.

  He knew that Gonçalves was waiting for the lancers to start their advance before he whistled for his men to shoot. He probably hadn’t noticed the complete slaughter of the detachment if he was concentrating on his front. He bellowed at the top of his voice. “Take them now, Vespãos!”

  Gonçalves blew his whistle promptly and half the Vespãos opened fire on the standing line of lancers, less than three hundred yards away. Six to seven seconds later, the other hundred men discharged their weapons at the back of less than a hundred lancers, who were in full flight.

  MacKay raised his voice again. “Percy! Take your company back tae support C Company. Dinna skulk about it. Let the Frogs know you’re comin’. I want them tae ken that there’s nae help for them up here.”

  Tonks waved acknowledgement and his men trotted back to the rim, flaunting themselves to anyone interested as they strolled down to join C Company.

  Gonçalves had the Vespãos recover their mounts and set out to round up all the riderless horses that had not fled with the survivors of the lancers.

  Pom was taken to the edge of the plateau to watch parties of French troops, under a white flag, recovering their wounded from the slope, while the rest of the force retired northwards. He re-affixed his shoulder decorations and rode back to Fuentes to report.

  The Hornets followed him soon afterwards, leaving Captain Richter and H Company to hold the rim of the plateau until the French had recovered all their wounded and left.

  They found the allies in possession of a town full of bodies, after a merciless, back and forth struggle that had lasted all day. Frustrated in his main thrust through the town and unable to make a decisive breakthrough in the south, Masséna had pulled back once more to think what else he could do.

  Wellington was busy renewing his defences in the town where it bordered on the River Dos Casas and preparing for the next attack. His army had suffered almost fifteen hundred casualties over the three days and he was sure that the French had lost well over two thousand.

  The Seventh Division could have been routed, but for the valiant intervention of British, Portuguese and German cavalry and the timely support of the Light Division.

  The involvement of the Hornets had been a side show compared with all this, but tactically, it had been a most successful side show and might have served to convince Lord Wellington that, valuable as he was convinced they were, there was no need to imagine that they needed to be shielded in any way.

  * * *

  In the morning, the army awoke to prepare for another day’s fighting. Some were disappointed to find that Masséna had given up and taken his Army of Portugal away, leaving Almeida to its fate.

  Wellington was not disappointed. He knew it had been a close run combat and that only his defensive skill had prevented a French superiority of three to two producing a crushing defeat for his forces.

  He congratulated MacKay on the achievements of his men and sent them out to find out where the French had gone.

  CHAPTER 13

  The light companies from Colonel Colborne’s brigade were stretched over several miles to the north of the Sierra Morena, waiting for the French to move north once more. They were expecting Marshal Soult and his army to link up with the forces that they had been watching ever since they had followed them on their retreat from the area around Badajoz.

  It was not a comfortable position for them to be in, as the first sign that the enemy was moving would be the arrival of scouting parties from the cavalry commanded by Latour Maubourg.

  None of the light troops fancied being found by Soult’s cavalry. They could defend themselves from mounted troops by forming squares, but squares were not suitable for marching, when men were facing outward on each side. It could be done, but was complicated drill and it was a long way back to Badajoz.

  The first French cavalry that they sighted was not at all what they had expected, but came as a considerable relief to most of them. A large, dejected, straggling party of chasseurs à cheval plodded through their lines, shepherded by Otto Fischer and his squadron of Hornissen.

  Several hundred horses were driven along with them and the prisoners must have prayed that they might be allowed to ride them. Cavalry boots were not to be recommended for walking more than the smallest distance.

  Captain Fischer and B Squadron had ‘found’ the chasseurs in the first place. Colonel Roffhack had deemed it only fair that he and his squadron should escort the captives back to Badajoz, while the rest of the German battalion continued with their task of trying to ensure that Blake’s Spanish army reached the allied forces, unmolested by the French.

  Escorting prisoners of war was not a duty that Otto Fischer felt was suitable for his highly trained men. As a Hornet, he had been encouraged to use his initiative and his proposal to Colonel Colborne was merely an example of this.

  Briefly, he suggested that he place B Squadron temporarily under Colborne’s command to conduct mounted reconnaissance for him. In return, one of Colborne’s light infantry companies could escort the prisoners back and the captured horses would then be available to carry the rest of his men away, when necessary.

  It meant that three hundred light infantrymen would have to learn to ride horses in the next few days, but the advantages were so obvious that the Hornissen were welcomed with open arms.

  * * *

  Roffhack’s other two squadrons explored the western foothills of the Sierra Morena and over the frontier into Portugal. If the Spanish had landed safely and their army was indeed marching up the River Guadiana, it would appear that the French had not heard of it yet, or perhaps had not been able to scrape together enough troops in time to interfere.

  They did encounter a few foraging parties, but they were not far enough west to be any threat to the Spanish. Most of them were infantry and Roffhack decided to ignore them, as taking prisoners was far more trouble than it was worth when they were so far away from their base. He realised that he was in danger of becoming complaisant by assuming that any enemy patrol of less than battalion strength could be ignored with impunity.

  He may even have been correct in his thinking, as the Hornets always followed Welbeloved’s dictum of discovering any threat well before it discovered them. He rationalised his thinking and decided that ignoring a known threat was not the same as being unaware of that threat.

  French infantry was always nervous in the presence of numbers of horsemen and these foragers were only too happy to be ignored. Some were nervous enough to form a defensive square or run for cover in a village, copse or wood. None of the parties that they encountered offered any form of aggression, not even the occasional troop or squadron of mounted men.

  The reputation of the brown-coated men with dragoon helmets was evidently highly respected among Soult’s cavalry and challenges were something to be avoided whenever possible.

  After a week, there was no mor
e need for boring reconnaissance. Lieutenant Heller, with 3 Troop of A Squadron, found them. Colonel Lord Vere and A Squadron had met the vanguard of Blake’s army. Nothing had been seen of Soult or his forces and the Spanish would be joining Beresford at Badajoz within the week.

  Now, he asked Roffhack to co-operate with Colborne and cover the withdrawal of his vedettes, as and when the French began to march.

  Six days later, all the guerrilleros in the Sierra Morena; the Brown Mountains; came streaming in to warn the watchers that Soult was marching north. Estimates of his strength varied wildly from twenty to forty thousand.

  Colborne slowly withdrew his men, covered by patrols of Hornissen, that maintained a watch on the French advance until they were in sight of the village of La Albuera, where Wellington had instructed Marshal Beresford to make his stand.

  The ground had been chosen with Wellington’s usual skill. The Albuera stream ran from south to north past the village. It was not of itself, much of an obstacle, but the range of hills to the west of it provided cover for the allied forces on the reverse slopes. They were deployed in a line of about five miles in length, with La Albuera itself some two thousand yards from the northern end.

  Very few of them were in view from the south-east, from where the French were approaching and Beresford assumed that Soult would see the village as the centre of the defence and make it the main point of attack.

  Now that Blake had arrived with eight thousand men to add to the six thousand Spanish already there, Beresford’s army was over thirty-five thousand. British and Portuguese provided ten thousand each. The KLG had just over a thousand and the total Spanish, fourteen thousand men, held the line of hills for three miles south of the village.

  The Portuguese were deployed on the left of the line, north of the village and the British and Germans were stationed in strength behind, in and around La Albuera, where the spearhead of the attack was expected.