by Rory Muir
Wellington had watched the French advance with keen interest and must have hoped that the attack on the village signalled an imminent French onslaught, which would give him the defensive battle which was still his preference. He had responded to Maucune's appearance on the Monte de Azan by continuing the shift of his own forces from left to right. The Fifth Division was ordered to the front line next to the Fourth, extending the line westwards from behind the village. The First Division, except for the light companies which remained in the village, was concentrated behind the Lesser Arapile, with the Sixth Division to its right supporting the Fourth. A little later the Seventh Division would be withdrawn from the left and would form behind the Fifth on the right, leaving only the Light Division, Bock's brigade of heavy dragoons and some light cavalry (12th Light Dragoons and one squadron of 14th Light Dragoons) facing Foy. Bradford's Portuguese brigade, Carlos de España's Spanish division, Le Marchant's brigade of heavy cavalry and George Anson's light cavalry were all in reserve, probably near the village of Las Torres. Finally, Pakenham's division and D'Urban's dragoons had almost completed their march and were approaching the village of Aldea Tejada, where they would rest for more than an hour.
Meanwhile, Maucune had established a powerful battery – British observers put it at about twenty guns – on the Monte de Azan, and this combined with the artillery on the Greater Arapile to open a heavy bombardment of the allied line. The Fourth Division was partly protected by the brow of the hill and suffered relatively little, but the ground to the west of the village, where most of the Fifth Division came into line, provided less shelter, and consequently it seems to have suffered rather more. Nonetheless, Charles Cathcart expressed the common opinion of officers on the staff, and of Wellington himself, when he wrote that the French ‘opened a most tremendous Cannonade upon our Line which lasted the greatest part of the day, but not to so much effect as might have been apprehended.’28
Soldiers in the ranks could not take such a detached view of the experience, as Corporal Douglas of the Royal Scots, in Leith's Division, makes clear: ‘In my opinion there is no situation in which men can be placed so trying as to keep them exposed to a heavy fire and not be allowed the privilege of self-defence.’29 Two longer accounts by ordinary soldiers, Robert Eadie and John Green, neither of whose units was in the front line, show the psychological strain caused by the bombardment:
It was about 2 o'clock, p.m. when the enemy extended his line to the left, under the cover of his artillery, the roaring of which was like one continued peal of thunder … our division, being in reserve, received general orders to cook, which we set about with all dispatch. It being my turn for this duty, I had just commenced kindling a fire, while one of my comrades was preparing the kettle; when my attention was [distracted] … we were in great danger at the camp kettles, as both shells and shot were coming thickly and rapidly from the enemy amongst us, occasionally exciting a smile at the ludicrous confusion which they caused, by striking a kettle, and upsetting its contents; the men scampering round to avoid being scalded, as they cursed the loss of the precious broth. Two of the cooks were killed before we left the ground; but as a precaution against what might equally have been my fate, I took care always to lie down flat on the ground, whenever I could perceive a shell coming in my direction, and which I had time enough to do. The whole of the lines were closely engaged ere we had accomplished the business of cooking, but whenever that was effected, and the measures of beef boiled, the soup was emptied out, and the beef put into our haversacks, and we marched off the hill with the officer to join our division, which we found still lying in close column as a reserve. Just at the moment of our arrival at the regiment, a shell was thrown by the enemy that unpiled a whole company's arms, but luckily enough, no one received any hurt. Shortly afterwards the beef was divided into messes and each man received his welcome share.30
The middle of the afternoon, 22 July 1812, about the time Marmont was wounded and Wellington decided to attack (all troop positions approximate, many conjectural).
This regiment, the 79th, was fortunate and suffered only four casualties in the whole battle, so that most of the shot and shells which disturbed Private Eadie in his cooking had probably overshot their original target. The second account, by John Green of the 68th, shows rather more real danger, although the author exaggerates the number of guns firing, and the casualty figures he gives are higher than those in the official returns:
About this time the cannonading commenced: the French had nearly one hundred pieces of cannon firing on our army … we had about sixty pieces; and the thunder of these one hundred and sixty guns was terrible, and beggars description.
Having joined the division [the Seventh], and taken our place on the left of the first brigade; we halted a few minutes, and then advanced to the spot where our artillery were stationed. We now came into an open plain, and were completely exposed to the fire of the enemy's artillery. Along this plain a division of the army was stationed: I think it was the 4th division: the men laid down in order to escape the shot and shells, the army not yet being ready to advance. As our regiment was marching along the rear of this division, I saw a shell fall on one of the men, which killed him on the spot; a part of the shell tore his knapsack to pieces, and I saw it flying in the air after the shell had burst.
The shot of the foe now began to take effect on us. As we were marching in open column to take our position, one of the supernumerary sergeants, whose name was Dunn, had both his legs shot from under him, and died in a few minutes. Shortly after, a shot came and took away the leg and thigh, with part of the body, of a young officer named Finukin: to have seen him, and heard the screams of his servant, would have almost rendered a heart of stone: he was a good master, an excellent officer, and was lamented by all who knew him. The next thing I have to relate is of the company which was directly in our front, commanded by Captain Gough: a cannon-ball came, and striking the right of the company, made the arms gingle and fly in pieces like broken glass. One of the bayonets was broken off, and sent through a man's neck with as much force as though it had been done by a strong and powerful hand. I saw the man pull it out, and singular to relate, he recovered: three others were also wounded. About this time I had a narrow escape from a cannon-ball, which passed within a few inches of me: although it was nearly spent, yet, had it struck me, I should have been either killed or wounded by it.
After this, we formed column of quarter distance; and several shells fell into our column, and did execution: one shell I shall ever remember: we were in the act of lying down, that it might burst, and do no mischief: the colonel cried out, ‘It is a shot!’ and we stood up immediately; but while in the act of rising, the shell burst in the midst of the regimental column, and, astonishing to relate, not a man received an injury by it.31
As this shows, each casualty in the regiment, and even beyond it, was noticed by the whole unit because there was nothing to distract the men; while in close combat, or even in the excitement of an advance, such losses would have much less impact on the unit's morale. Standing patiently under even distant fire was among the most unpleasant and demanding – but also one of the most common – duties of Napoleonic soldiers in battle.
This bombardment ought to have provided cover for the French to consolidate and secure their position on the Monte de Azan and fill the dangerous gap in their line between Maucune and Bonnet. Instead it saw a further extension of the left which proved disastrous for the army. For reasons which are not clear, Thomières's division, which should have remained in Maucune's rear, moved west along the Monte de Azan, thus becoming the leading division in the army. Neither Clausel nor Taupin was yet in a position to support Maucune or fill the gap to his right. In other words, Maucune and Thomières, who were already dangerously isolated from the rest of the army, ceased to be able to support each other and were strung out over a wide front, lacking depth and solidity.
Marmont recognized the danger and sent urgent orders to Sarrut and Fer
ey to march from the right wing of the army to the centre, and for Taupin to advance to support the left as soon as his division was in order. He then set out to ride to the left to check Thomières's advance in person and repair the damage, but just as he turned to mount his horse he was badly wounded in the right side and arm by a British shell fired by one of Dyneley's guns on the Lesser Arapile. He was carried to the rear, where the surgeons wanted to amputate the arm: he refused to permit this, and suffered much, but eventually recovered to take the field again in Napoleon's campaigns in Germany and France in 1813 and 1814.32
In Marmont's absence the command of the army should have passed to Clausel, the second-in-command, but when messengers reached the 2nd Division, they found that he had just been wounded in the heel by a British shell fragment and had gone to the rear to have it dressed. This left Bonnet as the next most senior officer, but he had scarcely taken command when he was seriously wounded in the thigh. Fortunately Clausel's wound had not disabled him, and he was still able to ride. He arrived at the Greater Arapile soon after Bonnet had been hit and took command, but through this extraordinary chain of events the French army had been left without an effective commander for a crucial hour or more. The British artillery could not match the volume of the French bombardment, but their retaliation had been unexpectedly effective.33
Marmont's responsibility for the disaster which followed has been much discussed. His own account, in his dispatches to Napoleon and in his Mémoires, is clearly a piece of self-justification designed to shift the blame and clear his reputation. But his arguments are subtle and plausible – infinitely more convincing than the egotistical bombast of most French memoirs of the period – and they may well be largely true, if incomplete: the innocent as well as the guilty have to defend themselves when things go awry. Marmont places most of the blame for the debacle on Maucune's impetuosity and says very little about Thomières. Fortescue makes the suggestion that Thomières and even Maucune may have mistakenly believed that the race of the previous days was to be resumed, and this seems at least possible.34 But most historians will have none of this and blarne Marmont squarely for the defeat. Oman and Sarramon expound this argument most convincingly, and others have followed their lead. According to their account, Marmont was elated by Wellington's aborted attack and was soon convinced that the allies were beginning their retreat. He discounted the danger of an allied attack and worried only that they would succeed in making a clean break and that he would thus be denied the chance to savage their rearguard. Consequently he pushed his left forward prematurely, urging his divisions to advance as soon as they emerged from the wood before they could properly regain their order.35
This is a coherent, plausible interpretation of events, and it may well be close to the truth, but it requires us to reject completely Marmont's account, while having little evidence to put in its place. The one piece of testimony which directly supports it appears in the memoirs of Colonel Girard, Clausel's chief of staff. Girard claims that Marmont sent repeated orders to the division urging it to press forward as the allies had begun to retreat. However, Girard is an interested party – he did not want the blame of defeat attached to his division – although less committed than Marmont. Other comparisons are less in his favour: Marmont's memoirs are based on documents written soon after the event; Girard's were composed many years later, and generally lack credibility, being vainglorious and often absurd: he is the hero of every anecdote, and invariably in the right. Girard's account certainly cannot be dismissed out of hand, but it is not compelling evidence in itself.36 Foy is a far more trustworthy witness, but he was on the other side of the army, near Calvarrasa de Arriba, and could not observe what happened in the centre and left of the army; while the atmosphere in the army after the defeat would not have encouraged dispassionate enquiry. Not that Foy pretends to give a detailed account of events in the centre: he simply and unequivocally blames Marmont for the defeat, and for most historians this has been enough to confirm the presumption of guilt which invariably clings to a defeated general.37
Ironically, the one detail which Foy does give counts in Marmont's favour, for he says that the marshal was wounded between 3 and 4 o'clock in the afternoon. This is a little earlier than the contradictory accounts given in other sources would suggest. Marmont himself said 4.15 in his first report, but changed this to about 3 o'clock in his memoirs. Unfortunately, it is impossible to establish the time more precisely, although most accounts place it between 3.30 and 4.15.38 This tends to support Marmont's account, being soon after Thomières began his disastrous march; but arguments based on the relative time at which events occurred – which would be compelling if the evidence supporting the times was reliable – are worthless when based on such contradictory evidence.
Given this, it seems impossible to declare with confidence whether Marmont's own mistakes were the principal cause of the defeat of his army, or whether this was mainly owing to the errors of his subordinates. In one sense this matters little. Marmont was in command of the army and so must bear the lion's share of the responsibility for defeat – just as he would have gained most of the credit for victory – whatever his personal role. He was also undoubtedly to blame for arranging his army so that the rash Maucune and the junior and relatively inexperienced Thomières were in the lead, although it seems that this was the result of committing Bonnet's division to seizing and holding the Greater Arapile. But the wider case against him is less compelling, more doubtful, than is usually acknowledged.
Whoever was to blame, the overextension of the French left would never have mattered if Wellington had not recognized and used the opportunity it gave him. The story of his sudden vision has been told many times with many variations. Here is his own account as recorded by Charles Greville in 1838:
He was dining in a farm-yard with his officers, where (he had done dinner) everybody else came and dined as they could. The whole French army was in sight, moving, and the enemy firing upon the farm-yard in which he was dining. ‘I got up,’ he said, ‘and was looking over a wall round the farm-yard, just such a wall as that’ (pointing to a low stone wall bounding the covert), ‘and I saw the movement of the French left through my glass. “By God,” said I, “that will do, and I'll attack them directly.” I had moved up the Sixth [sic: Third] Division through Salamanca, which the French were not aware of, and I ordered them to attack, and the whole line to advance. I had got my army so completely in hand that I could do this with ease.’39
A few months later Greville collected another version of the story from Fitzroy Somerset, who had been Wellington's military secretary, and perhaps his closest confidant in 1812. This confirms the gist of the Duke's account and adds some pleasing details:
They were going to dine in a farm-yard, but the shot fell so thick there that the mules carrying the dinner were ordered to go to another place. There the Duke dined, walking about the whole time munching, with his field-glass in his hand, and constantly looking through it. On a sudden he exclaimed, ‘By G——, they are extending their line; order my horses.’ The horses were brought and he was off in an instant, followed only by his old German dragoon, who went with him everywhere. The aides-de-camp followed as quickly as they could. He galloped straight to Pakenham's division and desired him immediately to begin the attack.40
It is a delightful anecdote which vividly captures the excitement of the moment, but it is also misleading. It suggests that Wellington made the decision to attack casually, almost impulsively, whereas he had probably been anxiously watching for just such an opportunity ever since he cancelled the earlier attack in the late morning. It implies that it was fortuitous that the army was perfectly placed to exploit the sudden opportunity, whereas Wellington had been gradually shifting his forces to the right all day; he had directed Pakenham's division to Aldea Tejada hours before; and he had carefully used the undulations of the ground to protect his troops both from observation and from the French bombardment. And worst of all, it suggests that t
he fault in the French deployment was so glaring that every drummer boy in the army must have seen it and understood its significance. But what could Wellington see? He could see Maucune's division deployed on the forward face of the Monte de Azan with a powerful battery in its front. He could see another French division emerging from its rear and pushing westwards along the skyline. And he knew that Bonnet's division was strongly posted around the Greater Arapile. But he did not know that Marmont had been, or was about to be, wounded. He could not see that Clausel's division had only just begun its belated advance to fill the gap between Maucune and the Greater Arapile. Above all, he could not see whether there was another division, or another two divisions in Maucune's rear. We know that the French left was unsupported, that Taupin was still at El Sierro and Sarrut behind Foy and Ferey on the right, but it seems most unlikely that Wellington would know this when he decided to attack. He judged that the French left was overextended and vulnerable, and he was correct; but it was not as simple, as easy or as obvious as that charming anecdote makes it appear. Twenty years of intelligent soldiering and careful observation lay behind the decision to cancel the attack in the middle of the day and to launch this new attack four hours later.
Once Wellington decided to attack, his plan was simple, but only because his troops were already in position. Another general might have committed the army to retreat hours earlier, or been so mentally committed himself that he would have seen in Thomières's move only a threat to his lines of communication, not an opportunity to attack. But Wellington had his army completely in hand, ready for whatever course he might need to take: whether to resist a direct French attack, or withdraw in the evening, or suddenly assume the offensive. Pakenham's division, supported by D'Urban's Portuguese dragoons and Arentschildt's two regiments of light cavalry, could advance largely under cover from its sheltered station near Aldea Tejada to the western end of the Monte de Azan, and then push along the plateau driving the French before it. At the same time that Pakenham turned their flank, Thomières and Maucune would be attacked in front by the British cavalry of Le Marchant and Anson, and by the infantry of Leith's division, supported by Bradford's Portuguese brigade, Carlos de España's Spaniards and the Seventh Division. Cole's Fourth Division would advance in the centre, supported by the Sixth Division, while Pack's Portuguese brigade could threaten or, if an opportunity offered, actually make a serious attack on the Greater Arapile. The First Division would remain in reserve behind the Lesser Arapile, while on the left the Light Division and Bock's dragoons would quietly contain Foy and the French right wing. The armies were so close that, if all went well, the French left would be destroyed before its reserves could be brought up and so the army could be defeated piecemeal. It was an excellent plan, but it remained to be seen how it would work in practice and, above all, how the allied army would perform in its unaccustomed role as the aggressor.