To War with Wellington

by Peter Snow

Wellington deplored the performance of his cavalry. Victory at Vitoria should have led to the destruction of the French army, but much of it escaped. Besides, Graham’s force failed to thrust its way as far around behind Vitoria as it might have done. The road to the strategically placed city of Pamplona remained open. William Tomkinson, another light dragoon involved in the action with Fred Ponsonby, recognised the cavalry’s failure: ‘Had all the cavalry been brought forward to have acted the instant the enemy passed Vitoria, I think there was a fine chance of taking a great many prisoners, but as is always the case the cavalry was not up.’ Tomkinson, who had seen much of Wellington during his time at army headquarters, suggests that his excessively hands-on leadership was partly to blame for the cavalry’s failure at Vitoria. ‘Lord Wellington may not like to entrust officers with detachments to act according to circumstances, and I am not quite clear if he approves of much success, excepting under his own immediate eye.’

  What should have been a glorious day for Wellington’s men ended in disgrace. The victorious British army abandoned its pursuit of the French and turned to highway robbery. In their desperation to flee, Joseph Bonaparte, his retinue and his army’s senior commanders left behind a great trail of gun carriages, coaches and wagons stuffed with their belongings. Joseph himself narrowly escaped being seized by two hussar officers who threw open the door of his coach just as he leaped out and on to the back of a horse the other side. Within minutes a chaotic convoy of abandoned vehicles littered the first few miles of the road to Pamplona. They contained all the wealth the French high command had amassed and the treasures they had plundered from the palaces of Spain in six years of occupation. Throughout the evening of 21 June whole units of the British army threw order to the winds and indulged in an orgy of looting that dwarfed what had happened at Badajoz. To many of them, after all, plunder was the reward for victory. There were also women in the convoy who did not run away, Spanish girls who had been persuaded – or forced – to join Joseph’s travelling court. ‘They were young and good-looking,’ reported August Schaumann, and now ‘all they wanted was protection and a new lover, both of which they soon obtained, and they were to be had for the asking.’ There were extraordinary scenes that evening – men staggering along under the weight of boxes of gold they had seized from the carriages as well as clothes, weapons, animals, personal belongings, even documents. William Wheeler ‘secured a small box of dollars’; George Bell made do with a ‘big sack, a cold fowl, a few maps, and a flask of wine’.

  No man could be sure he would escape with his loot: a sort of anarchy prevailed. People fought each other for the richest takings. Ned Costello spotted a man who had been working for the French carrying a heavy portmanteau. ‘I compelled him to lay it down, which he did, but only after I had given him a few whacks in the ribs with my rifle.’ In it were several small bags filled with gold and silver in doubloons and dollars which Costello reckoned were worth at least £1,000. He decided to keep the loot for himself as his companions had gone off somewhere else. ‘All who had the opportunity were employed in reaping some personal advantage from our victory, so I determined not to be backward.’ The portmanteau was too heavy to carry so he snatched one of the mules that were blocking the road, but, unable to load the bag on to the mule’s back, he asked three passing soldiers to give him a hand.

  ‘Incautiously, I rewarded them too liberally, and in giving them several handfuls of dollars they got a glimpse of the gold, half of which they demanded. Perceiving the probability of being deprived of the only prize I had made after years of hardship and suffering – and particularly to newcomers, for this regiment had newly joined from England – I inwardly resolved not to forfeit it except with my life.’ Costello seized the loaded rifle he had left propped against a gun carriage and cocked it. ‘Retiring three or four paces, I brought it to my shoulder and swore I would shoot dead the first man to place his hands upon my treasure. My determined air, and the ferocity of my appearance – my face was covered in perspiration and gunpowder – induced them to pause, and finally desist.’ On his way back to his tent he passed Wellington, who ‘to my great relief took no notice of myself and my mule, being much too occupied in securing the brilliant results of our victory’.

  Much of the plunder ended up in the camp where there was soon a carnival atmosphere. The looters set up makeshift stalls to offer their spoils for sale. The whole place echoed to the clinking of coins being counted and the chatter of deals being done. ‘Fifty dollars for this pipe.’ ‘Here is a portrait of Napoleon for a hundred dollars.’ William Wheeler said he knew of nothing to compare it all with ‘but an Arab camp after a successful attack on some rich caravan’. Animals like mules and goats were sold for knock-down prices. Delicacies from Joseph’s royal kitchen wagon were hawked about. There was drinking and carousing in plenty too. Soldiers paraded around dressed in French uniforms they had found in vast wooden chests. And all this went on against the background of the appalling suffering that always followed a major battle. There were cartloads of wounded French, Spanish and English soldiers, their uniforms covered with blood and dirt. Shambling queues of French prisoners waited to be locked up in churches and other temporary places of detention.

  The following morning August Schaumann found the ground all around Vitoria littered with the aftermath of the looting. ‘In their lust of plunder the soldiers had … torn the cushions and seats of vehicles and strewn their contents abroad … I saw huge and beautifully kept ledgers belonging to the Royal treasury, wonderful maps and expensively bound books … trodden underfoot and sodden with the rain which had fallen during the night.’ One document was extracted from Joseph’s belongings with meticulous care by codebreaker George Scovell. It was entitled ‘Sa Majesté Catholique’ and was the Spanish King’s personal copy of the decoding table of Napoleon’s Grand Cipher. Scovell had already largely broken it, but its discovery neatly capped years of work he had done to help procure Joseph’s collapse. The King’s silver chamber pot was spirited away by the men of the 14th Light Dragoons who had found it in Joseph’s coach. Two centuries later, nicknamed ‘The Emperor’, it is the centrepiece of a cavalry barracks’ mess silver. On mess nights it is passed round full of champagne by officers of the King’s Royal Hussars, today’s heirs to the young dragoons who found it in 1813. The last man to drink from it has to finish it all or have the remains poured over his head.

  Wellington sent a cavalry detachment to do what it could to stop the looting. But it was too late to secure more than a few carriages. All order and discipline among his ‘vagabond soldiers’, he said, had been ‘totally annihilated’. He expressed his fury to London with his usual hyperbole. ‘We have in the service the scum of the earth as common soldiers; and of late years we have been doing every thing in our power, both by law and by publications, to relax the discipline by which alone such men can be kept in order … It is really a disgrace to have any thing to say to such men as some of our soldiers are.’ At least Wellington had used the word ‘some’ to exclude others from blame, but this was a particularly furious outburst. He was clearly mortified by his failure to stop all but a fraction of the stolen coin being snatched by his soldiers. He had hoped to use it to help defray his army’s expenses. He was also keenly aware of his army’s failure to pursue the French effectively after such a decisive victory, a failure that allowed too many of them to fight another day. It was hardly fair of him to blame all of that on his men’s behaviour when he himself might have done more to maintain the momentum of the advance. Besides those units that did ignore the temptations of the baggage train and chase after the enemy ran into strong French resistance on a difficult mountain road.

  The irony is that the greatest single beneficiary of the sack of the baggage train was Wellington himself. Joseph had stashed away in his carriage a bundle of priceless Old Master canvases he had seized during his rule in Madrid. There were 165 of them altogether, including The Waterseller of Seville by Velázquez and Correggio’s Agony in the Garde
n. A few had to be retrieved from soldiers who were using them as baggage covers. Wellington, without immediately knowing their value, had them transported to London. They still grace the walls of his home at Apsley House at Hyde Park Corner. His heirs have not been pestered by requests from the Spanish to return them: Wellington was granted permanent possession of them by a grateful Spain as a reward for its liberation.

  13

  The finger of God is upon me

  Pyrenees, 1813

  VITORIA WAS A masterly victory. Wellington had already disposed of the jibes that he only fought defensive battles by attacking and destroying Marmont at Salamanca. At Vitoria his reputation went up another notch. He had orchestrated a highly complex set of attacks from four different quarters that left his enemy completely bewildered. His determination to strike before Clausel could join Joseph gave him little time to reconnoitre the ground. Yet his instinctive eye for the terrain served him well and helped him to co-ordinate the attacks with near-perfect timing. It is true that if Graham had moved more swiftly he might have managed to cut Joseph’s only remaining escape route, and some believed Wellington could have used his cavalry to more effect.

  But the result was devastating for the French. Although more than 50,000 escaped, they lost 8,000 men, the British and their allies 5,000. Napoleon’s hold on Spain was over. Wellington was able to boast later that he was right to ignore his staff’s advice before crossing the Ebro. ‘I was right in my military expectations, and I found afterwards that I was equally right in my political speculations. The victory excited a great sensation in Germany, and particularly at the headquarters of the allies.’ Alexander Gordon, one of those whose advice had been spurned, was happy to admit he was wrong: ‘I never saw a large army so very soon beat and the French behave so ill … I have no doubt but that the army we have beaten must go back to France.’

  The news of Vitoria was received with delight in Britain. It came as a very welcome boost to a Tory government which had had to work hard to explain the setbacks of the last two months of 1812. The Prime Minister Lord Liverpool wrote to Wellington, ‘I trust you will be satisfied with the impression which your great and splendid victory has made upon the public in this country. I have no doubt it will produce a state of feeling not less gratifying on the continent …’ Every effort was made to spread the news of Vitoria across Europe, and special emissaries were sent to take the detailed story to Britain’s three main allies in Europe, Prussia, Russia and Austria. Wellington was appointed field marshal by a grateful Prince Regent.

  He was now able to focus on the big picture, and his eyes were on the man he always saw as his main antagonist. Napoleon, with astonishing resilience, was still rampant in central Europe. He had picked himself up from the disaster of his Russian campaign in 1812, recruited another large army in 1813 and plunged into Germany. With the Austrians sitting on the sidelines, in May he won yet more victories over Britain’s allies, the Prussians and Russians. The news of Vitoria shocked him. He was already aware of the danger Wellington presented to his southern flank. Only a few days before the news of Vitoria broke he had met the Austrian Foreign Minister Prince Metternich in Dresden and was reported to have told him, ‘Wellington – there’s a general … but also the only one who has ever understood me or has ever really given my marshals something to think about.’

  Napoleon was now so shaken by the news of Vitoria that he immediately despatched Nicolas Soult to confront Wellington. Soult was no genius on the battlefield, but he had the administrative skills to reinvigorate and reinforce Joseph’s broken army on the Spanish border. He knew as much about Spain as any of Napoleon’s marshals and he relished the prospect of getting even with the man who had thrashed him at Oporto in 1809. Napoleon, now inexorably entangled in a fight for his regime’s survival in central Europe, was waking up to his strategic mistake in not going to Spain himself to destroy Wellington before it was too late. ‘The unfortunate war in Spain’, he was to reflect years later in exile on St Helena, ‘was a real affliction and the first cause of the calamities of France … all this effected my ruin.’ Wellington had not yet met Napoleon in the field, but he studied his every move. Wellington, the aristocrat, took a typically snobbish view of Napoleon as a man: ‘Buonaparte’s mind was, in its details, low and ungentlemanlike. I suppose the narrowness of his early prospects and habits stuck to him; what we understand by gentleman-like feelings he knew nothing at all about.’ But Wellington was in no doubt about Napoleon’s military genius. He told a friend that Napoleon’s presence on a field of battle was worth 40,000 men.

  If Vitoria alerted Napoleon to the critical state of his empire in the south, the battle’s outcome had a powerful effect on the allies too. Prince Metternich is reported to have told Wellington later that he had been woken in the middle of the night to be told that Joseph Bonaparte had been ‘screwed’ in Spain, and he added that this had led to a determination among the allies to denounce the armistice and pursue the war until Napoleon himself should be ‘screwed’.

  For two weeks after Vitoria the British army chased the French towards the border and the formidable Pyrenees mountains, where Wellington expected his enemy to make a stand. There was little fighting, but forced marches and chilly nights in the open. George Simmons was gathering wood for the Light Division one day when he ran into Sir Thomas Picton in particularly irascible mood. The general, who had had it in for the Light Division ever since his rows with Robert Craufurd, said to Simmons: ‘Well, sir, you have got enough wood for yours and my Division. I shall have it divided. Make your men throw it down. It is a damned concern to have to follow [you]. You sweep up everything before you.’ Simmons promptly complained to the Light Division commander, General Alten, who happened to be near by. ‘He was very much annoyed,’ and Simmons left him ‘to remonstrate with General Picton’.

  While Fred Ponsonby’s light dragoons were chasing the retreating French, he took a moment to intercede for the artillery commander Captain Norman Ramsay, who had fallen out with Wellington. Ramsay, who had made a name for himself by leading his horse artillery in a spectacular breakout at the battle of Fuentes d’Oñoro, had been arrested after Vitoria. Wellington was furious that Ramsay appeared to have disobeyed orders and taken the wrong route after the battle. Ponsonby, who greatly admired both men, felt it was a misunderstanding and successfully intervened to get Ramsay released. ‘I am anxious to state how miserable he [Ramsay] is at having incurred your Lordship’s displeasure,’ wrote Ponsonby, ‘and to express a hope that his long services in the country may induce you to pardon him.’ Ramsay burst into tears when he was told he had been released and reinstated. Two years later, still commanding his troop, he was killed at Waterloo.

  During this pursuit of the French, there was still time to chase the ladies. On the road to the Pyrenees August Schaumann took time off from being a commissary to perfect his skills. In one village, he claims he had no fewer than five romantic encounters. ‘In the first place there were the Donnas Francisca and Stephania from Seville … who were very responsive … there was a handsome beauty who was the wife of a Spanish colonel … I also had a pretty girl who paid me many visits, and finally the legitimate spouse of an organist, who always availed herself of her husband’s duties in the church to come to me. I therefore had plenty of variety.’ George Bell and other officers of the 34th Regiment, who called themselves the Cumberland Gentlemen, had earlier spent several weeks in one Spanish town where ‘there were many pretty girls … every fellow had his own sweetheart. The young ladies were charming, barring education …’

  Within two weeks of Vitoria there were only three pockets of French troops between Wellington and the border – a small village called Vera in the western Pyrenees, and the towns of Pamplona and San Sebastián. Beyond them the French retired behind the border which ran along the Pyrenean mountain tops. Jonathan Leach was with the Light Division as it took up position within sight of Vera. From the heights above it they had a distant view of the ocean, which the
y hadn’t seen for several years. ‘A spontaneous and universal shout was raised by the soldiers, which must have astonished our French neighbours, who were separated from us only by a valley.’ Close by, through rich green mountain country, flowed the River Bidasoa which was, for a short distance, the frontier between Spain and France, where the mountains dropped down to the sea. The main forces of either side were now concentrated on opposite banks of the Bidasoa and in the approaches to the high Pyrenean passes further east. It was wild and dramatic country, heavily forested and with steep, rocky inclines that made movement difficult. Leach was able to catch some ‘uncommonly fine trout’ in the Bidasoa. He and seventy-three brother officers in the three battalions of the Rifles celebrated their regimental anniversary with a huge dinner on the riverbank. They dug two trenches to sit in, leaving the ground in the middle to serve as a table – all within sight and earshot of the French who ‘were too civil and well-behaved to disturb the harmony of so jovial a set of fellows’.

  The Siege of San Sebastián

  Wellington ordered Dalhousie to blockade Pamplona, while Graham began the siege of San Sebastián, the last great Spanish fortress on the main coast road into France. The siege of Pamplona would have to wait for San Sebastián to fall. The Royal Navy could now deliver guns, ammunition and food directly to the army through ports in northern Spain. The fall of San Sebastián would open up the whole of Spain’s north coast. Wellington was in no hurry. Some commanders – borrowing a favorite tactic of Napoleon’s – might have maintained the momentum of the advance by skirting San Sebastián and driving deep into France itself. But what if Napoleon managed to neutralise the allied threat in Germany? And what if he then swung round and threw his weight against an invasion of south-western France? Wellington preferred to consolidate his hold on the Pyrenees and secure San Sebastián and Pamplona. Everything else could wait.