To War with Wellington

by Peter Snow

  The redcoats then got the order to charge: with bayonets clipped on to the barrels of their muskets, they launched themselves at the stalled French column. ‘In we went, a wall of stout hearts and bristling steel. The French did not fancy such close quarters. The moment we made the rush they began to waver and then went to the right about.’ The whole of the 48th Regiment now joined the charge of the 29th. Most of the French ran for it, but occasionally one or two turned to fire a shot. ‘We, however, kept dashing on, and drove them all headlong right before us down the hill into their own lines again. We kept following them up, firing, running, and cheering.’ In the space of just forty minutes in that narrow valley between the two hills the French lost 1,300 men. Just as the rout was complete, Hill was hit by a musket ball in the back of the neck. Fortunately it wasn’t serious, and he was out of action for only two days. Charles Leslie was wounded too. ‘At about 7 o’clock I received a ball in the side of my thigh, about three inches above the right knee. In quitting the field I passed near Sir Arthur Wellesley … he looked at me, seeing the blood streaming down my white trousers but he said nothing.’ The French commander ordered his men back up the Cerro, but again they were pushed back.

  Utterly exhausted, the French and the British enjoyed a moment of truce along the line of the brook. Some collected the dead and wounded. All drank greedily. Even if it was running with blood, as eyewitnesses report, the water was a blessed relief. The men’s mouths were parched and hot from biting off the tops of powder cartridges. The two sides even chatted to each other across the brook. It was unusual for this kind of contact to occur during a battle – but it did at Talavera. More often such conversations took place between pickets or sentries when all was quiet. Jonathan Leach recalled that the French were courteous and ‘gentlemanly to a degree … once in a thick fog a small patrol of ours suddenly found themselves close to a superior force of French cavalry, and instantly retired but in the hurry one of our dragoons dropped his cloak’. A French dragoon then came ‘riding up to within a short distance, dropped the captured cloak on the ground and rode away making signs to the English dragoon, who had lost it, to pick it up’. Sometimes the two sides actually did business. On one river front line, the British sentries would ‘put some coppers in a mess tin, give it a rattle to draw the attention of the [French] sentry’, then one of the British ‘stepped down to the water, gave his tin another rattle, placed it on the centre big stone calling out “Cognac” and retired … it was returned in the evening full of brandy (not likely of the best quality)’.

  Back on the Talavera battlefield any fraternisation was soon forgotten. Wellesley suddenly had his attention drawn to his extreme left. In the valley to the north of him a large French infantry force was assembling and beginning to threaten his exposed left flank. Unless he moved against them fast, they could assault the north side of the Cerro hill. He sent orders to General Anson’s brigade, which included Fred Ponsonby’s 23rd Light Dragoons, to stop the French in their tracks. It was to be Ponsonby’s first cavalry charge. Under the command of Colonel Seymour, the horsemen trotted off. The moment the French foot regiments saw the approach of the 23rd’s blue jackets faced with red, they formed squares. This was the well-tried infantry response to an attack by cavalry. The footsoldiers packed together in a tight square four ranks deep, facing out. The back two ranks stood with muskets aimed, the front two ranks knelt with bayonets tilted up at a 45-degree angle: it was almost unknown for a horse to plunge willingly into this wall of steel blades. No mounted man’s sabre could reach through it. Only a lancer could hope that his nine-foot-long weapon would pierce enemy flesh. The square was a formidable defence against cavalry, a sort of giant hedgehog. The 23rd’s pace quickened, 460 men packed tight together – only a few inches of space between the riders – with 450 men of the 1st Hussars a little behind. The trot became a canter, the canter a gallop. Sabres down to the horizontal. ‘Charge!’

  ‘An ear-splitting yell arose from our own and the Spanish armies, cheering them on.’ August Schaumann witnessed it from the top of the hill. ‘When the trumpeters blew the charge, a cloud of dust arose, and in a moment an indescribable and terrible scene was enacted.’ With the front rank of the French square just 100 yards away, a hollow ravine suddenly yawned in front of the horsemen. It was far too late for them to stop: the first man to reach it managed to clear it. He turned round and frantically tried to signal to those behind to wheel round. Again, too late. Some cleared the large ditch, some fell, some collided with others – there was utter chaos, loose horses running in all directions. Most of the 1st Hussars managed to swerve away. But the 23rd lost half their number almost immediately, and more moments later to the fusillade that met them from the square drawn up just in front of them. They were down to 160 horsemen, led on by Ponsonby, one of the few surviving officers. Galloping wildly forward, they skirted the square and plunged deep into squadrons of French cavalry beyond. William Napier, the soldier historian, who fought in the Peninsula, described the charge of the 23rd. ‘Major Frederick Ponsonby, a hardy soldier, rallied all who came up and passing through … a fire from both sides, fell with inexpressible violence upon a brigade of French chasseurs in the rear.’ To spectators, such as August Schaumann on the Cerro, they disappeared into the fog of battle. ‘All we could see was here and there a riderless horse appearing through the smoke, and dashing across the battlefield. Meanwhile the furious though unsuccessful attack, which revealed the true mettle of the English cavalry, had so startled the French that they not only ceased storming the hill, but a portion of their cavalry took flight.’

  Ponsonby somehow fought his way out of the mêlée and back across the ditch, with what was left of his regiment. He wrote home to his mother: ‘We had the pleasing amusement of charging five solid squares with a ditch in their front. After losing 180 [men] and 222 horses we found it was not so agreeable and that Frenchmen don’t always run away when they see British cavalry, and so off we set, and my horse never went so fast in its life.’ Ponsonby’s sister Lady Caroline Lamb was so shocked when she heard the news of his escape, she wrote to their mother: ‘Good God how dreadful it is to have him there [in Spain], and what you must suffer if I feel so miserable and anxious.’

  Ponsonby concluded that the effect of the cavalry action, ‘though it proved so fatal to the 23rd dragoons, was to relieve us of any advance upon our left’. And it did indeed do that: the French move to outflank Wellesley in the plain beyond the Cerro was foiled, and Wellesley could move the exhausted remnants of the 23rd to reinforce his centre and right where the battle was already at its height. He was grateful to the 23rd but irritated as well. Once again, in his judgement, his cavalry had gone far too far and risked the safety of his army by losing so many of their number in just a few minutes. He was putting together a mental dossier of how his cavalry failed to control their ardour. There was Taylor at Vimeiro: now here were Ponsonby and the other officers of the 23rd at Talavera. He began to have growing doubts about what he saw as their recklessness. This made him reluctant to use his cavalry to exploit a collapsing enemy and perhaps prevented him from winning more sweeping victories than he actually did.*

  In the early afternoon with the sun beating down and the temperature over 30 degrees, the men in the centre and at the right-hand end of Wellesley’s line prepared to receive the main French assault. They had been under destructive gunfire for some time. Even though most of them were lying down, many had been torn apart by the French roundshot or had their limbs smashed by explosive shells. During the worst of the cannonade the only movement came from the men shifting mutilated corpses to the rear. The rest lay still, waiting for the inevitable tramp of the columns of blue straight towards them across the brook. Schaumann, safely behind the lines, found the noise terrifying. ‘The thunder of the artillery, combined with the whizzing and whistling of the shot in such an attack, resembles a most dreadful storm, in which flashes of lightning and claps of thunder follow one another in quick succession, and cause t
he very earth, not to mention the heart in one’s breast, to shake and quiver … A Spanish powder magazine blew up … and with it a gunner was flung aloft, and sailed through the air with arms and legs outstretched like a frog.’

  Then the French guns went silent and the assault began. John Cooper’s fusiliers were over on the right near the Spanish: ‘The enemy were massing for attack. The death cloud was gathering blackness and soon burst with fury.’ Cooper saw several columns begin to move towards him. One of them ‘called out “Espanholas”, wishing us to believe they were Spaniards. Our captain thought they were Spaniards, and ordered us not to fire. But they soon convinced us who they were by a rattling volley.’ Then British cannon came into play. First at long range they fired roundshot. One six-pound iron ball could cut a man in half at eight hundred yards. Shrapnel exploded at long range too and scattered deadly fragments over a wide area. But at this short range, two hundred yards or less, it was canister that was the most destructive ammunition against advancing infantry. Each shot unleashed a fast-widening circle of musket balls with deadly effect at point-blank range. And behind the guns were the long lines of British infantry who now rose to their feet. They staggered for a moment under the French fire, but Cooper saw his commanding officer spring from his horse and seize one of the colours, shouting, ‘Come on Fusiliers!’ ‘’Twas enough. On rushed the Fusiliers and 53rd regiment and delivered such a fire that in a few minutes the enemy melted away.’

  Once again the overwhelming firepower of British line against French column paid off. This French attack alone cost Victor and Joseph up to 700 men. Wellesley watched from the top of the Cerro. So far all was going well. But the main French attack now hit Wellesley’s centre, and this was where Victor concentrated his greatest strength. Here were his best troops, veterans of Napoleon’s victories in eastern Europe. They hugely outnumbered the British troops in front of them and the men of the King’s German Legion who had survived the battering they had that morning. Now the French advanced in a vast mass to the beat of their drums. But once again they were in column not in line. Wellesley’s men, each regiment in two thin red lines, could bring all their muskets to bear, and they waited till the French were only sixty yards away before they fired. Some of the British didn’t wait to fire: the two Guards battalions went straight into a bayonet charge. The French turned and ran.

  But this was where triumph nearly led to disaster. The Guards, with the Germans alongside them, chased after the French across the Portina brook and several hundred yards beyond. The further they went, the more their lines broke up in chaos and the French guns began to pound their exposed flanks. The French, who had broken before the guardsmen’s charge, now rallied and forced them back. Within a few minutes the Germans had lost 1,000 men, the Guards 600. Worse than that, fresh French infantry poured into the gap the Guards had left in the British line: Wellesley’s entire position was now under dire threat. And it was only his cool judgement and swift grasp of command that saved the day. In his account of the battle he reported that the Guards had ‘advanced too far’ and that he had ordered the 48th (Northamptonshire) Regiment to move from the top of the hill, where he himself was, to plug the gap. They had around a thousand yards to cover to get there. Every second counted. Two other battalions under General Mackenzie were rushed up. The three battalions quickly formed up in line – leaving gaps to allow the retreating Guards to filter through to safety in the rear. Moments later the French were upon them, and they fought a desperate battle to stop the line being broken. Mackenzie himself was killed but his men, with the 48th beside them, fought for every inch of ground, and the line held. By evening it was the French who retired from the field, leaving Wellesley to claim the victory.

  Talavera was, Wellesley boasted, ‘a great and glorious victory over more than double our numbers, which has proved to the French that they are not the first military nation in the world’. It was true that the 20,000 British had borne almost the whole force of the attacks by 46,000 French, while the Spanish for the most part looked on. Wellesley’s men had killed or wounded 7,250 Frenchman, many of them veterans of Napoleon’s triumphs at Austerlitz and Jena. But the Emperor still had well over 100,000 men available to fight in the Peninsula. Wellesley had lost 5,300 of his far smaller British force, and his victory did not in the end put him any closer to Madrid. He himself had escaped being wounded when a bullet scraped his shoulder and made a hole in his coat. In London the battle prompted plenty of doubters, but the government delighted Wellesley’s admirers by pronouncing him a viscount. Since he was not available to choose a title, his brother William plumped for Wellington, in Somerset, ‘a town’, he said, ‘not far from Wellesley’. ‘Wellington …’ – Arthur Wellesley toyed with the name for a moment, then nodded: ‘Exactly right!’

  In the same month that Wellesley was advancing on Talavera, Napoleon was advancing on Vienna. He crushed the Austrians at Wagram on 4 and 5 July, three weeks before Victor’s defeat in Spain. Napoleon’s reaction to Talavera was a mixture of frustration and fury. ‘I really ought to be everywhere,’ he is reputed to have exclaimed once he had established what had happened. He had the usual glowing reports from his own commanders, anxious to please their emperor. His brother Joseph wrote, ‘Yesterday, Sire, the English army was pushed back … the battlefield on which we are established is littered with their dead.’ He even made the grotesque boast that he regretted not having taken every British soldier prisoner. The accounts Bonaparte read in the British newspapers, which he made a habit of scanning and tended to believe, told a quite different story. It took him a few more days to discover the truth and then he exploded. He sent a scathing message to Marshal Jourdan, Joseph’s chief of staff, for claiming that he ‘had seized the field of battle at Talavera, while subsequent reports show that we were repulsed the whole day long. Tell him that this infidelity towards the government is a regular crime … he has no right to disguise the truth from the government.’

  But if Napoleon was beginning to register a trace of anxiety about damage the new Lord Wellington of Talavera was causing at the other end of his empire, he wasn’t worried enough to think of tackling him in person. Wellington had a very small army: besides, far from advancing further into Spain, he decided to retreat. Napoleon’s letters talk confidently of the prospect of the British force ‘embarking’ and leaving the Peninsula.

  5

  Damned with might and main

  Retreat, 1809

  IT TOOK WELLINGTON only a day or two to decide that he could go no further. Madrid was less than a hundred miles away across reasonably flat and easy country. A bigger risk-taker might have ordered a close pursuit of Joseph’s army. But Wellington now faced a new threat from behind him. Soult had bounced back after his defeat at Oporto. He had gathered a large army and was racing from the north to cut Wellington off from Portugal. Wellington was not one to gamble when he didn’t have to. Joseph’s army was in front of him and Soult’s behind. He wouldn’t have won every major battle he fought if he had not always made a cool assessment of the odds against him. If the enemy had the potential strength to unite to trap him, better to avoid a battle and wait for a later opportunity. He believed that the test of a great general was ‘to know when to retreat and to dare to do it’.

  He knew that a retreat would give ammunition to his opponents in London. But Wellington was entirely confident of his own judgement and well able to cope with the loneliness of supreme command. ‘I like to walk alone,’ he had written to his brother Henry eight years earlier. He would pursue his campaign to weaken Napoleon’s hold on the Peninsula at his own pace. Wellington’s officers were by now resigned to the fact that their Commander in Chief took none of them into his confidence. He would share his plans with nobody – until he wanted them implemented. And he always haughtily rejected the idea of a second in command. He later wrote to Beresford, ‘I have always felt the inutility and inconvenience of the office of second in command … there is no duty for the second in command to perfor
m … the office is useless.’ Wellington had one piece of good news the day after Talavera. His three eagerly awaited regiments of light troops arrived under the command of General ‘Black Bob’ Craufurd, whose skirmishers had been sorely missed at Talavera. Wellington knew of Craufurd’s reputation for ruthless discipline and accomplished tactical skill on the battlefield. Black Bob’s men either loved him or loathed him. They were used to his headstrong temperament, his violent fits of passion and his voice with its odd, high-pitched squeak. One quality in him they learned to value greatly was one he shared with Wellington – they were both sticklers for logistics. If soldiers were to fight, they had to be supplied. As Ned Costello recorded, ‘The Caçadores particularly caused much laughter among us by shouting out in Portuguese, the moment they caught sight of him: “Long Live General Craufurd, who takes care of our bellies” … the General seemed highly pleased and bowed repeatedly with his hat off, as he rode down their ranks.’ Someone in the commissary department once complained to Wellington that Craufurd was threatening to hang him, as he had others in the past, if supplies were not produced by a certain time. Wellington replied, ‘Then I advise you to produce them, for he is quite certain to do it.’

  Craufurd had force-marched his three battalions up from Portugal. On the day they arrived just too late for the battle they had marched sixty-two miles in twenty-six hours, according to William Napier, the historian, who accompanied them as a light-infantry captain. From now on they would form a critical component of Wellington’s army all the way to Waterloo. First, there were the riflemen of the 1st Battalion of the 95th Regiment, the 1/95th, young officers like Jonathan Leach, George Simmons and a newcomer, Harry Smith, whose father had just bought him a commission. Among the other ranks were Ned Costello and Bugler William Green. They would share many extraordinary adventures together and tell their stories with wit and sensitivity. And there was Colonel Beckwith, the gentle, humane Sydney Beckwith, the commanding officer every last man in the 95th loved and would follow to the death. There were two other battalions in the so-called Light Brigade: the 1/52nd, which included John Dobbs, the Irishman who had joined up at fifteen only three years earlier, and the 1/43rd. This was the regiment of Thomas Garrety, another Irishman who had been bewitched by the sound of the drum and joined up at the age of fourteen. Napier developed pleurisy on the long hard march with Craufurd from Lisbon, and was lucky to survive.