To War with Wellington

by Peter Snow

  Whether or not Wellington believed there was some justification for the way his men behaved, the fact remains that the looting persisted for three days and no decisive action was taken by the Commander in Chief to stop it. Another indication of his thinking came in a letter to Lord Liverpool, the Secretary for War, two months later. He suggested that part of the explanation for the ‘outrages committed’ by British soldiers was due to the low levels of pay handed out to non-commissioned officers, which he believed made them ‘as little to be depended upon as the private soldiers themselves’. He urged the government to pay the corporals and sergeants, upon whom discipline largely depended, a more generous wage.

  There is further controversy about Wellington’s conduct of the siege of Badajoz. Some argue that the final assault and its aftermath would not have been so fierce and bloody if he had spent several more days wearing down the defences before giving the order to attack. But Wellington was determined to make Badajoz his, and Soult’s army was dangerously close to moving in to relieve it. A day or two more and Wellington’s army might have had to face in two directions at the same time – fighting both Soult and Philippon. One lesson that Wellington was finally able to drive home to the government in London in his account of the battle was that the British army now deserved a proper corps of miners and sappers – a new Corps of Engineers. The particular expertise, commitment and stamina required of those who had to dig the trenches for the siege guns was something that Wellington believed was beyond the call of duty of ordinary soldiers. They had endured the misery of it in the sieges of Badajoz and Ciudad Rodrigo and he was adamant that it would not happen again. ‘The truth is’, he wrote to a colleague the day after the storming of Badajoz, ‘that equipped as we are, the British army are not capable of carrying on a regular siege.’ He made it clear that with proper engineering protection the siege guns could be brought up much nearer their targets to give closer support to the assault troops.

  In taking Badajoz, Wellington had achieved one of his most important victories. The speed of his successful storming contrasted sharply with the disarray in the French high command. Two entire armies – under Soult and Marmont – had been in the area but Napoleon had ordered Marmont elsewhere, and Soult chose not to move to the immediate relief of Philippon. Wellington had proved himself yet again a master of strategic manoeuvre and logistics in moving his entire army and siege train across western Spain without being forced into battle by the French. He had captured the town that controlled access to central Spain. But it was at a huge cost – 5,000 British casualties, 3,000 of them in the actual assault. He wept openly when he visited the worst parts of the battlefield on the morning after the storming. In tears over the mangled bodies in the breaches he encountered Picton, who was limping around after his wound. ‘I bit my lips and did everything I could to stop myself for I was ashamed he should see it, but I could not, and he so little entered into my feelings that he said “Good God, what is the matter?”’It was one of those rare occasions when Wellington allowed his mask of imperturbability to slip and reveal that even he could be moved by the horror of war.

  Wellington knew that if he owed his triumph at Badajoz to any single man it was Thomas Picton. Picton in turn recognised his debt to the Connaught Rangers, whom he had angrily accused of misconduct back in 1809. Since then he had been impressed by their conduct at Fuentes d’Oñoro. And now during the looting of Badajoz, when one drunken private soldier shouted at him, ‘Are we the Connaught Robbers now?’, he replied, ‘No, you are the Connaught Heroes.’

  Badajoz had seen as much heroism as any siege in British history. And in a letter to Lord Liverpool Wellington wrote that the capture of Badajoz ‘affords as strong an instance of the gallantry of our troops as has ever been displayed. But I greatly hope that I shall never again be the instrument of putting them to such a test as that to which they were put last night.’

  10

  Marmont est perdu

  Salamanca, 1812

  WITHIN THE SPACE of twelve weeks Wellington had swept away the two great bastions that protected Spain from attack. The way was now clear for him to stab deep into the heart of Napoleon’s Iberian empire. The French Emperor remained blind to the threat from Wellington. Spain was a sideshow. His mind was on a far grander horizon. He was about to embark on his most audacious campaign of all, an invasion of Russia. One glance at the balance of forces in Spain convinced him that he had more than enough troops there. But most of them were pinned down in the north, east and south tackling the Spanish revolt. In western Spain only Marmont with 50,000 men stood between Wellington and Madrid. Wellington’s task was to continue the piecemeal strategy that had so far served him well and to bring Marmont to battle without prompting all French armies in Spain to combine against him. Marmont was in Salamanca, 100 miles to the east of Ciudad Rodrigo. The magnificent old university city would be Wellington’s next target. He would move against it in the summer when the fields either side of the road would be rich in grain to feed his men and horses. If he could isolate and destroy Marmont at Salamanca, he would open the way to the Spanish capital.

  The only sizeable actions in the spring of 1812 were cavalry battles. In the week after Badajoz fell Fred Ponsonby helped win a major engagement at Villagarcía eighty miles south-east of Badajoz. He was in temporary command of a brigade – three regiments including his own 12th Light Dragoons. A second brigade was commanded by another up-and-coming cavalryman, John Gaspard Le Marchant. The two of them combined to surprise and trap a smaller French force. William Tomkinson was one of Ponsonby’s men. He watched as Ponsonby’s three regiments were suddenly joined by one of Le Marchant’s heavy cavalry regiments, which ‘completely upset the left flank of the enemy’. They all charged at the same time and ‘success was complete. The view of the enemy from the top of the hill, the quickness of the advance on the enemy, with the spirit of the men in leaping the wall, and the charge immediately afterwards was one of the finest things, I ever saw.’ The British overall cavalry commander, Lieutenant General Sir Stapleton Cotton, wrote to Wellington that Ponsonby and Le Marchant had commanded their brigades with ‘much gallantry and judgment’. It was an accolade that Ponsonby relished.

  Villagarcía apart, Wellington was still concerned by his cavalry commanders’ tendency to overreach themselves. He hadn’t forgotten Ponsonby’s reckless charge at Talavera, and only two months after Villagarcía an over-ambitious cavalry charge at Manguilla ended in heavy casualties. Wellington declared that he was ‘never more annoyed’. Judgement was the quality that he believed was most lacking in his cavalry commanders. He observed that British cavalry officers had acquired ‘the trick of galloping at everything, and … galloping back as fast as they gallop at the enemy. They never consider their situation, never think of manoeuvring before an enemy – so little that one would think they cannot manoeuvre, excepting on Wimbledon Common …’ Wellington’s cavalry long resented this despatch and his continuing doubts about their conduct. But he was never to shake off his suspicion that they were incapable of self-discipline. His scepticism would become a lifelong conviction after the heroic but suicidal cavalry charges at Waterloo. It is one of the puzzles of history that Wellington, an able horseman himself, who commanded all his battles from the saddle, never managed to raise his cavalry to the same level of professionalism as his infantry.

  By the middle of June Wellington was ready to advance on Salamanca. The spring rains had done their work. The rich farmland on either side of the road was bursting with fresh corn and there was plenty of food and forage for the horses. When the army arrived at Salamanca on 17 June, Marmont had moved out of the city leaving a garrison of 800 men in three forts. Over the next few days the two main armies converged north of the city – Wellington on the heights of San Cristóbal, Marmont on the plain to the east. Wellington had the stronger position and was clearly hoping that Marmont would attack him or attempt to rescue or reinforce his men in the three forts. The two armies were just 800 yards apa
rt, and there was some skirmishing between the two sides, but no open battle. On the 21st Wellington was up early, clearly hoping to tempt Marmont to attack him. He had the advantage of higher ground and larger numbers. Even his capricious cavalry would have free range of the flat ground around the French forces. ‘Damned tempting! I have a great mind to attack ‘em,’ he was heard to say. But he didn’t. Wellington was not a man to attack unless he saw an overwhelming advantage or was faced with no alternative.

  Marmont too was tempted, but that evening he agreed with those of his generals who urged him not to engage Wellington when the British commander was in a strong defensive position. He withdrew a few miles to the east of Salamanca and manoeuvred for a few days looking for an opportunity to relieve the forts. But on 27 June he heard that the forts had surrendered after ten days of resistance which had cost Wellington 500 men. He now pulled back fifty miles across the River Duero (as the Douro is called in Spain) and for the next few weeks the two armies faced each other across the river. Fred Ponsonby wrote to his mother: ‘We have been looking at each other without our being able to get at them or their wishing to get at us.’

  In mid-July Marmont received a letter from King Joseph, Napoleon’s brother, in Madrid urging him to do battle with Wellington. In a sharp reversal of plan he ordered the French back southwards across the Duero on 15 July. The move surprised Wellington and soon both armies were heading south-west towards Salamanca. Wellington kept a constant watch on the movement of the French, anxious not to let them overtake him. At one point he and Marshal Beresford were present when some French cavalry charged Fred Ponsonby’s 12th Light Dragoons and pushed them back to a ford, exposing Wellington and Beresford to attack from the French. The two commanders quickly drew their swords and John Cooke watched from only a few yards away. ‘Wellington was in the thick of it, and only escaped with difficulty. He … crossed the ford with his straight sword drawn, at full speed, and smiling. I did not see his Lordship when the charge first took place, but he had a most narrow escape …’ Cooke was only twenty yards from the ford when ‘one of our dragoons came to the water with a frightful wound: his jaw was entirely separated from the upper part of his face, and hung on his breast: the poor fellow made an effort to drink in that wretched condition’.

  The cat-and-mouse game went on for days, the two armies shadowing each other on parallel courses only a few hundred yards apart. Alexander Gordon observed: ‘It was a beautiful sight seeing the 2 armies moving together … 100,000 men manoeuvring so near to one another that one could hardly suppose it possible they were not coming to action.’ Simmons saw at not more than 500 yards’ distance a ‘dense mass of Frenchmen moving in the same order, horse, foot and artillery. It was quite ridiculous to see two hostile armies so close without coming to blows.’ But still neither felt strong enough to attack the other. Marmont was determined to keep threatening to turn Wellington’s flank and cut off his communication with Ciudad Rodrigo and Portugal. Wellington had to protect his supply line, but as he reported to London, ‘I have … determined … not to fight an action, unless under very advantageous circumstances, or it should become absolutely necessary.’

  On 21 July the two armies were still warily eyeing each other and sliding south-west hoping to outflank each other. Occasionally shots were exchanged. Fred Ponsonby wrote to his mother that commanding the British rearguard was ‘very warm work for 15 hours. We lost a few men and horses by a cannonade and skirmish but we made a charge upon their tirailleurs and knocked most of them out.’

  Both armies splashed across the Tormes river, which makes a wide curve around Salamanca. ‘Luckily’, said Simmons, ‘we got over before the rain, which immediately afterwards came down in torrents. The night became excessively dark, the whole army groping their way, up to their knees in mud …’ William Wheeler happened to move away from the shelter of an old oak tree for a moment to get a light for his pipe. A stroke of lightning brought the tree down on the very spot where he had been standing. ‘This was a lucky pipe of tobacco,’ he wrote.

  By the evening of the 21st the allied army was established on a ridge with its left flank at Santa Marta on the Tormes and its right on a hill called the Lesser Arapil. The French faced them – looking west across a valley from the village of Calvarassa with their left flank near a higher hill called the Greater Arapil. These two hills, called locally Los Hermanitos, the Brothers, dominated the landscape. Both Wellington, who already possessed the Lesser Arapil, and Marmont quickly saw the importance of seizing the Greater Arapil. On the morning of the 22nd they raced to occupy the hill. Marmont’s men had less far to go and got there first.

  The Battle of Salamanca

  It was then that Wellington displayed a rare moment of hesitation and indecision. His reaction to Marmont’s seizure of the Greater Arapil was to do something he had been reluctant to do in the Peninsula so far. He decided to abandon his previous tactic of waiting for the French to attack him and ordered two of his divisions to assault the hill. But then in discussion with his staff he allowed himself to be persuaded to call off the attack. This was not the Wellington most of his staff were used to. William Tomkinson remembered him being ‘a little nervous’ and allowing himself to be talked out of it by Marshal Beresford. ‘Lord W is so little influenced, or indeed allows any person to say a word, that his attending to the Marshal was considered singular.’ But within two hours any sign of doubt in the British commander would vanish.

  The two hills now became pivots round which the two armies began to deploy, each one making a right angle. Marmont began to shift his army southwards around the Greater Arapil and then towards the west. Wellington had found the ideal command post high on a hill called the Teso de San Miguel. From there he could see Marmont begin to extend his army across the hills to the south. He had to match the French marshal’s every move. He shifted five of his seven divisions – each of around five or six thousand men – back behind the ridge and then swung them round to face south. One of his divisions, the 3rd, and some cavalry he moved way off to the west – to the village of Aldea Tejada, again completely out of sight of the French. He was determined to protect his access to the road back to Ciudad Rodrigo. The 3rd, now known as the Fighting Division, had successfully scaled the walls of the castle at Badajoz under Sir Thomas Picton. Picton was gravely ill with fever but had been talking of forcing himself to lead his division even though he could hardly stand. But when he heard that Wellington had given temporary command to one of the rare men Picton respected, Wellington’s brother-in-law Major General Sir Edward ‘Ned’ Pakenham, he capitulated: ‘I am glad he has to lead my brave fellows; they will have plenty of their favourite amusement with him at their head.’

  At 11.30 a.m., with most of his divisions now ready to turn west around the Greater Arapil, Marmont climbed to the top and scanned the horizon. He had been told that Wellington’s baggage train was already heading west. He now saw clouds of dust way off in that direction and assumed that these were British troops marching off to Ciudad Rodrigo. This prompted him to make a disastrous move. What he had seen was the dust thrown up by Pakenham’s 3rd Division and its accompanying cavalry. Far from retreating to Ciudad Rodrigo, it was now poised to defend Wellington’s right flank. Marmont ordered his divisions to begin probing towards the west. But he was sending his men into a trap. Wellington – after a night sleeping out in a downpour – turned up in his blue frock coat and cocked hat for a late breakfast in a farm overlooking the landscape. He gave his telescope to one of his aides and tucked into a few mouthfuls of cold meat. He had hardly begun to chew when one of his aides said, ‘The enemy are in motion, my Lord.’ ‘Very well, observe what they are doing,’ replied Wellington. After about a minute the ADC said, ‘I think they are extending to their left.’ ‘The devil they are,’ said Wellington, springing to his feet. ‘Give me the glass quickly.’ He took it, and for a short time earnestly scanned the French moves. There in the sloping scrubland west of the Arapiles he could see the French forces
moving west across his front. One French division, General Maucune’s, halted more or less opposite the British line, but that of General Thomières did not stop but marched on west – greatly extending Marmont’s line from east to west with every minute that passed. ‘Come,’ he exclaimed, ‘I think this will do at last.’ Then, to his Spanish liaison officer, General Miguel de Álava, he said, ‘Mon cher Álava, Marmont est perdu [Marmont is lost].’ And chucking a chicken bone over his shoulder he was off.

  Leaping on his horse Wellington rode off to Aldea Tejada, the small village about three miles west of his command post where Ned Pakenham had taken up position. Wellington rode fast, ignoring the fact that his staff found it hard to keep up with him. It didn’t matter because he was going to deliver his orders in person. Besides, Pakenham was only the first of his commanders he had to give orders to. Every second counted. Wellington rode in among Pakenham’s troops, ‘quite unruffled in his manner, and as calm as if the battle about to be fought was nothing more than an ordinary assemblage of the troops for a field day’. ‘Ned,’ he said, ‘move on with the 3rd Division, take those heights in your front and drive everything before you.’ ‘I will, my Lord,’ replied Pakenham – asking only to shake his brother-in-law by the hand before he set off. Wellington swung his horse round and galloped back, stopping briefly to order some cavalry units to support Pakenham’s attack. Now that he had thrown Pakenham against Marmont’s extreme left, he had to direct his other units at the rest of the French line. As far as he could he would exercise the tightest possible personal control over each element of the battle.