by Rory Muir
There is considerable difference of opinion over how long the Sixth Division waited in front of El Sierro before launching its attack. An anonymous source in the 61st Regiment says that it remained under heavy skirmisher fire ‘for near three quarters of an hour’. Napier vaguely says it was kept waiting ‘a long time’, while Thomas Hamilton, who was not present but who draws on evidence which has not otherwise survived, says that the Third Division lay idle for ‘about an hour and a half … gazing on the new and formidable position in which the enemy had sought temporary refuge’, and implies that the French artillery fire was quite heavy. Ross-Lewin, on the other hand, states that ‘Lord Wellington was not long in preparing for the attack; but the hour, unfortunately for him, was very late.’22
The 61st Regiment source gives a rather different impression of the assault than most other witnesses, although some of his details tally neatly with Major Newman's narrative:
The Major-General finding that the brigade was losing many men from the fire of the enemy called the C.O.s of the Regiments to him to intimate his intention of attacking the hill in front … [and told] them to make the same known to their respective corps. The communication was received by the two corps with an instantaneous shout of ‘Yes, we will!’ and three cheers. This was followed by an immediate advance unchecked by the destructive fire from the French artillery and numerous sharpshooters. The movement was performed by the Regiments with sloped arms, by order, until the hill was crossed.
On the arrival of the brigade at the summit of the hill, the enemy again formed their troops into column and faced a proportion of their files outward to receive the attack of the 11th and 61st who threatened their flank. The two Regiments formed to the right, on the right file of the 11th and then opened their fire upon the column … and soon compelled it to retire.23
Napier gives a dramatic and picturesque description of the appearance of the fighting from a distance:
in the darkness of the night the fire showed from afar how the battle went. On the side of the British a sheet of flame was seen, sometimes advancing with an even front, sometimes pricking forth in spear heads, now falling back in waving lines and anon darting upwards in one vast pyramid, the apex of which often approached yet never gained the actual summit of the mountain, – the French musketry in opposition, rapid as lightning, sparkled along the brow of the height with unvarying fulness, and with what destructive effects the dark gaps and changing shapes of the adverse fire showed too plainly.24
A letter from 2nd Lieutenant Frederic Monro of Greene's battery of 6-pounders (no. 10 Company, 8th Battalion, RA), which was attached to Clinton's division, suggests that the fighting was less fierce and protracted than later accounts claim, but the weight of evidence is overwhelmingly against it: ‘The 6th division advanced up the principal hill, and an incessant fire of musketry commenced; it was now getting darkish and the fire was grand beyond expression (take the word ‘incessant’ in its full extent). The enemy staid till our men arrived at the top of the hill – then threw down their arms and ran. Mem. – Frenchmen fine goers.’25
On the other hand, Ross-Lewin's claim that the light company of his regiment captured a French howitzer is supported by a contemporary letter from his brother, which states that they took two guns, and the brigade as a whole, five.26 To these must be added the gun which Wachholtz saw captured, so that the allies claimed the capture of at least six guns. Lamartinière's return acknowledges the loss of an 8-pounder and three 4-pounders from Ferey's division; Sarrut's division lost a 6-inch howitzer; and it may have been at this point that Clausel's division lost a 4-pounder or Bonnet's division an 8-pounder. So for once the claimed captures and the admitted losses can be reconciled, although if the allied sources were fuller, the number of claims for captured guns might rise.
Lemonnier-Delafosse's credibility suffers from his claim that Ferey was killed outright by a cannonball. Martinien does not accept this, recording that Ferey was severely wounded but did not die until 24 July, and this is confirmed by several British sources which describe his grave miles from the battlefield. Similarly his statement that Ferey's division was finally broken when allied cavalry charged it in the flank is unsupported by any other source and is intrinsically most unlikely – it is hard to imagine which allied cavalry unit might have made this charge. But the most damaging part of Lemonnier-Delafosse's tale is the far-fetched claims he goes on to make in passages not quoted earlier. Put briefly, these include the statement that his regiment spent the night only a few hundred yards behind its first position, as it would not retreat without formal authorization from a general; and that Lemonnier-Delafosse spent several hours – despite a sprained ankle – wandering through the chaos of a routed army, trying to persuade any senior officer he met to return to the battlefield to give the requisite command. This strange mixture of bureaucratic punctilio and Boy's Own derring-do fails to convince.27
The losses of the Fusilier brigade are referred to in the main narrative, but not discussed. They were a little heavier than those of Hinde's brigade: 380 casualties, or 28 per cent. As the brigade had certainly lost heavily in its fighting with Clausel's division, this supports the idea that it was less seriously engaged against Ferey. One of its three regiments, the 1/7th, lost far more than the other two: 195 casualties, or 40 per cent of its strength; the 1/23rd lost 106 casualties, or 24 per cent; and the 1/48th lost only 79 casualties, or 18.5 per cent. This rather suggests that the Fusiliers may have extended beyond Ferey's main line, and that only the 1/7th (on the right of the brigade) received the full weight of French fire. There is some support for this in Wachholtz's account. His light infantry were on the extreme left of the Fusilier brigade, and he notes that they encountered virtually no opposition.28
One technical point needs explanation: the reason that it was more difficult to fire accurately downhill than up was that the initial trajectory of a ball leaving a perfectly level musket was slightly up; troops might correct for this at short range and aim for the enemy's knees, but could not be brought to add a further correction for falling ground, effectively aiming in front of their opponents. The effect was well known at the time, with one Peninsular veteran writing that firing uphill ‘is far more destructive than firing down, as the balls in the latter case fly over.’29 Wellington's tactic of deploying his infantry on the reverse slopes of hills allowed his opponents the psychological advantage of gaining the crest, but his men had the compensating advantage of firing up at them.
The French casualty figures given in the narrative are based on Lamartinière's return, and in this case Martinien's record of officer casualties matches them quite closely. Inevitably there is still a difficulty. Lemonnier-Delafosse clearly states that his regiment (31st Léger) lost 360 casualties, of whom 80 were dead, while Lamartinière shows only 276, with 68 killed or captured. It is not uncommon for old soldiers confidently to give casualty figures in their memoirs that do not match those in contemporary documents, while, as has already been mentioned, Lamartinière's return is incomplete. It seems probable that total casualties suffered by the 31st were between the two figures given (perhaps around 330); Lamartinière's figure for the number of men killed or captured can be accepted as fairly accurate. The proportion of killed to wounded in the figures given by Lemonnier-Delafosse would be most unusual.
Finally, in Andrew Leith Hay's manuscript narrative account of the battle, which was written after the war and which varies both from his contemporary letters and from his published works, he adds some further comments on the reasons why the Sixth Division suffered so much:
The Charge of the Bayonet as usual carried everything, and it was owing to the 6th Division halting and firing at the Enemy that our loss was so great. Those Divisions who rushed upon the Enemy without hesitation not only did not lose nearly so many men, but did the business much better, and nowhere did the French Columns stand for an instant when fairly attacked with the Bayonet.30
Chapter Ten
Foy and the Fre
nch Retreat
The battle was almost over, and yet many thousands of allied soldiers, and even some thousands of French, had not fired a shot, or made a charge or confronted an enemy face to face. The Spanish contingent – Carlos de España's division and Julián Sánchez's lancers – lost only two men killed and four wounded in the whole day. This produced a rather sour reproach from a Scottish sergeant in one of Pakenham's regiments:
During the battle, the Spanish army, under Don Carlos d'Espagne, had remained at a respectable distance on a height in our rear without having been engaged; they seemed to be perfectly contented with seeing us fighting for their country, without having a hand in it themselves, and when we were successful, they threw up their caps in the air, and cheered as heartily as if they had earned the victory; they had only one or two men wounded of their whole army, while ours lost nearly half of its number in killed and wounded.1
Sergeant Donaldson's figures are, of course, wildly inaccurate: his own regiment, the 94th, had less than one-tenth of its strength killed, wounded or missing, and this was fairly typical of the allied army as a whole. His hostility to the Spanish troops may have been felt by many in the Anglo-Portuguese part of the army, but it was not universal. The anonymous author of an annotated contemporary plan of the battle found among the papers of Major-General Charles Ashworth is much more generous, writing ‘The village of Las Torres occupied by the Spaniards under Don Carlos d'Espagne, until moved out before the attack commenced. This Corps were very steady under a heavy cannonade and advanced in high order.’2
The Spanish division suffered fewer casualties than any other allied force of comparable size, but a number of other allied units were barely engaged. Bradford's independent Portuguese brigade, which was to have advanced on Leith's right flank but instead lagged behind, never caught up with the front line or seriously came into action. It probably lost about twenty casualties, from an initial strength of two thousand. As with España's men, these would have been the result of long-range artillery fire, stray shots and accidents.
The Seventh Division suffered rather more: about 150 casualties from 5,175 officers and men, or 2.8 per cent of its strength, but these figures include all the losses of the Brunswick Oels Regiment, three of whose companies were attached to brigades in the Fourth and Fifth Divisions. The Seventh Division had also taken the lead in the morning skirmishing around Nuestra Señora de la Peña, and this is probably where most of its casualties occurred. Later in the day it was transferred to the right wing of the army and suffered a little from the French bombardment on its march; it ultimately advanced in the wake of the Fifth Division.
These three units, the Seventh and Spanish Divisions and Bradford's Portuguese, amounted to over ten thousand men, but played no significant part in the battle. They formed the second line or reserve for Wellington's right wing and would have been called upon if Pakenham or Leith had got into difficulties, just as the Sixth Division had filled the hole created by Cole's defeat. Ideally they might have advanced sooner and taken over the pursuit of the French left from the weary men of the Third and Fifth Divisions, and perhaps even acted more effectively against Ferey's flank. But few battles go entirely smoothly, and none without missed opportunities.
There was an even larger force on the allied left flank, and it too saw little action, at least until late in the day. Here was the First Division (except for the light companies of the Guards which had been detached to the village of Arapiles) and the elite Light Division, as well as Bock's brigade of the Heavy Dragoons of the King's German Legion, and the 12th Light Dragoons from George Anson's brigade, apparently supported by at least one squadron of the 14th Light Dragoons from Victor Alten's brigade. In addition to the batteries of Ross and Gardiner, attached to the Light and First Divisions, this wing also contained a battery of 24-pounder iron howitzers under the immediate command of Captain Arriaga, although Lieutenant-Colonel Dickson spent the battle with them. Altogether there were more than eleven thousand men on the allied left, and for most of the day they did little more than watch the French troops opposite them, with occasional desultory skirmishing and exchanges of artillery.
This passive watching and waiting was not easy, even for veterans. There was the strain of knowing that at any moment they might be sent forward into close combat and, simultaneously, a paradoxical feeling of being left out of the great event. Edward Costello expresses this lightly:
Although every moment expecting to be sent into the thick of it, we kept undisturbed possession of our ground, from whence we could see the column of the enemy on the heights engaged in attempting to repel the advance of our troops. When the ‘glad sounds of victory’ reached us, a general feeling of pleasure pervaded our ranks, mixed perhaps with some regret that we had not taken a more active share in the battle. But all we could do we did, which was to pepper the French well in their hurried retreat from the field.3
In the middle of the day, the French right wing was even stronger than the allied left it faced. Foy's division in the front line, with Ferey in support and Boyer's dragoons on the outer flank, amounted to some 12,500 men, not counting Sarrut's division further to the rear. But just before he was wounded, Marmont had summoned Sarrut and Ferey and three of Boyer's four regiments to the centre, leaving only Foy and the 15th Dragoons – some 5,500 men – to guard the right. Wellington might have tried to exploit this relative weakness by sending his left forward to attack, but Foy's division was strongly posted in a formidable position, and the First Division, which was all that gave the allied left its numerical superiority, was carefully placed behind the Lesser Arapile so that it could support the left or centre with equal ease. Until the battle in the centre had been decided – with the breaking of Bonnet and Clausel – it would have been unwise to commit the First Division permanently to the left, unless it were absolutely necessary.
Foy remained inactive until the battle was clearly lost. There was nothing he could do to turn the tide. If he had tried to move his division to the centre, this would have freed the much larger allied force facing him either to turn the French right, or to join the fighting in the centre. If he had tried to attack, even as a diversion, he would have courted destruction for no possible gain. Simply by remaining in position and by keeping his division intact, he contained the allied left wing and protected the right flank of the French army – this was not enough, but it was all that his force could achieve. And when the time came to withdraw, he did so skilfully, while continuing to protect the army's flank. His own account is clear and convincing:
At this point I received orders to quit Calvarrasa de Arriba with my division and join the rest of the army. I arrived at the edge of the wood half an hour before sunset. The battle continued to be extremely bloody; one could hear nothing above the continuous musketry and cannon fire. The French took flight. I decided not to enter the wood but to take a position very near by, behind a ravine, in order to cover the retreat of the army. There was time; the victorious enemy was advancing towards Alba de Tormes between Calvarrasa and the wood, with two strong bodies of infantry, six cannon and 1,500 cavalry. I sent my skirmishers to delay their advance and they engaged them with artillery and musketry. Night saved my division and those I was protecting; without it I would probably have been broken and the enemy would have arrived at Alba de Tormes before the remains of our seven broken divisions. For an hour after sunset the English cavalry continued its charges on my regiments formed alternately in line and en masse. I had the good fortune to have my division in hand at all times and maintain its good order, although many of the broken units coming onto our left threatened to carry disorder into our ranks. The enemy's pursuit stopped near Utero de Maria Asensio, and all our forces found their way to Alba de Tormes where the army was gathered about 10 at night.4
One of Foy's officers gives us a glimpse of the anxiety of this difficult withdrawal, when the object was to delay the allied advance without involving the division in serious fighting:
The general
wishing to share in the dangers of the army and protect it from a great disaster offered battle on the bank of a steep ravine and disputed its passage. Baron Desgravier[s], commanding our brigade, (who was killed in this position) crossed the ravine with two companies of our regiment in order to stop, or at least retard the enemy's advance, but they did not show any fear or hesitation. Time was precious, and I resolved, by myself, without consulting or orders from anyone, to advance on their head. On my heavy, ponderous horse I climbed the steep bank and arrived at the top at point-blank range from the English. Having thus gained time until night fell, the regiment fell back and I retraced my path, not without danger of being thrown from my horse whose rapid leaps down the slope were dangerous. I saw with regret that a sergeant-major, many voltigeurs and their captain had fallen in action.5
Foy's division retreated east then south-east, from its position in front of Calvarrasa de Arriba towards Alba de Tormes, where the leading fugitives of the French army were already crossing the river. But Wellington believed that the Spanish garrison still held the castle at Alba, and consequently that the French would have to retreat by the fords at Huerta and Encinas, some six to eight miles further north. In daylight, or in more open country, this illusion might soon have been dispelled, but night was falling and the country between the French position and the river was broken and heavily wooded, so that it was almost impossible to see troops moving even a little way off. Apparently Wellington did not entirely ignore the possibility that at least part of the French army might try to escape via Alba (there were fords above and below the town, as well as the bridge which the castle dominated), for there is some evidence that he directed the Sixth and Third Divisions to advance on it, but they were too tired to make any progress that night.6 However, his main effort was directed to the north-east: Wellington must have hoped that if he could seize these fords rapidly he might prevent much of Marmont's army from escaping, or at least force it to abandon its heavy equipment and scramble across the river at inferior, less well-known fords, increasing its disorder and demoralization. There was another reason for heading north-east: once they crossed the Tormes, the French would almost certainly direct their retreat on Peñaranda, almost twenty miles to the east, and the fords offered the more direct route in this direction, while passing through Alba would add several miles to the army's march. Even if the allies failed to catch the French on the river, the fords thus offered the best chance of intercepting their march on the following day.