Wellington: A Personal History. Christopher Hibbert

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СКАЧАТЬ wounded; Ney quarrelled bitterly with Massena who soon dismissed him from his command; and the French at last turned their backs on Lisbon.¹⁵

      Wellington followed them cautiously. His duty was clear: he would not risk the army entrusted to his care by unnecessary fighting; he must get it across the road which led out of Spain towards the French frontier at Bayonne. Once he had cut across that road, north of Madrid at Burgos, not only Massena’s army but all the French troops in Spain would have to fall back towards the narrow gap that separated the foothills of the Pyrenees from the waters of the Bay of Biscay. Yet there must be no sudden dash towards León and old Castile. Portugal must be safe behind him; he had to retake Almeida in the north and Badajoz in the south, and, in the meantime, keep his ‘own army entire’, for if he weakened it by a rash advance he might find himself ‘so crippled as not to have the ascendant over the French troops on the frontiers’.¹⁶

      The French, fighting actions when they had to, marched slowly and painfully towards the Portuguese frontier in the gently falling rain, losing hundreds of men on the way, hungry soldiers torturing peasants, women and children as well as men, to discover hidden stores of food and wine. Exhausted stragglers fell with a kind of relief as prisoners into the hands of their wily pursuers.

      On 10 April 1811 Wellington felt able to issue a proclamation declaring that the ‘cruel enemy’ after suffering ‘great losses’ [of 25,000 men] had retired across the Agueda into Spain. The inhabitants of Portugal were ‘therefore at liberty to return to their homes’.

      Having supervised the close investment of the French garrison in Almeida, Wellington, anxious as always to see things for himself, galloped south to reconnoitre Badajoz, killing two horses on the way, exhausting the soldiers of his escort, two of whom were swept away and drowned in a torrent, pausing to write letters and orders before leaping once more into the saddle. Leaving Beresford to besiege Badajoz, he rode back again as fast as he could towards Almeida – which Massena had determined not to lose without a fight – his arrival welcomed with relief by both officers and men who had been uneasy to be commanded in his absence by Sir Brent Spencer, as always perfectly agreeable, but less noted than ever for ‘military quickness’ and certainly not considered to be a match for ‘that old fox’, Marshal Massena.

      South of the town, the two armies met at Fuentes de Oñoro on 3 May 1811. It was a hard and savage battle, in which Craufurd’s Light Division performed brilliantly executed service in rescuing the shattered battalions of the 7th Division from what seemed for a time almost certain defeat. The British infantry, drawn up in squares, held firm against the charges of the French cavalry; but the outnumbered British cavalry were no match for Massena’s lancers and hussars.¹⁷ The British line did not break, however, and Almeida fell, though its garrison was allowed to escape through the incompetence of several officers, among them the brave, unbalanced Sir William Erskine and the commanding officer of the 4th Foot, Colonel Bevan, who, late in obeying orders then losing his way, was selected as a scapegoat by Erskine, and, rather than face a court-martial, blew his brains out.¹⁸ Another officer behaved so recklessly that Wellington decided that ‘there was nothing on earth so stupid as a gallant officer’.¹⁹ It was all very well ‘to want to be forward in engaging the enemy’; what was wanted was ‘cool, discriminating judgement in action’.*²⁰

      The whole operation outside Almeida had left Wellington furiously angry and bitterly dissatisfied. It was ‘the most disgraceful military event that has yet occurred’.²¹ He was driven to conclude that the Prime Minister was ‘quite right not to move thanks for the battle at Fuentes’.²² ‘It was the most difficult one I was ever concerned in,’ he told his brother William.²³ ‘We had very nearly three to one against us engaged; above four to one in cavalry; and moreover our cavalry had not a gallop in them; while some of that of the enemy were fresh and in excellent order. If Boney had been there, we should have been beaten.’†²⁴

      Wellington was just as displeased when he learned how Beresford had fared south of Badajoz at Albuera. There had been a fierce fight here, too. Beresford’s men had held their ground under heavy bombardment from Soult’s artillery, and had withstood the attacks which his infantry and cavalry had launched against them. But so many men had been killed or wounded – 4,000 out of 10,000 engaged – that Wellington felt obliged to complain that another such battle would ruin his army.²⁵ As for this one, he refused to allow the ‘croakers’ in England to make capital out of it. When Beresford’s gloomy dispatch arrived at headquarters he declined to send it on. ‘This won’t do,’ he said to the staff officer who brought it to him. ‘Write me down a victory.’ ‘The dispatch was altered accordingly.’²⁶ ‘If it had not been for me,’ he explained, ‘they would have written a whining report upon it, which would have driven the people in England mad. However, I prevented that.’²⁷

      At the same time, to comfort and reassure Beresford, he wrote him a kind letter: ‘You could not be successful in such an action without a large loss, and we must make up our minds to affairs of this kind sometimes, or give up the game.’²⁸

      Just how terrible the slaughter at Albuera had been was brought home vividly to Wellington when he went there himself to supervise another siege of Badajoz. The men of one regiment were ‘literally lying dead in their ranks as they stood’, a phenomenon he had never encountered elsewhere.²⁹ A French officer had already seen the bloodstained bodies of hundreds of his countrymen, ‘all of them naked, the peasants having stripped them in the night’. An English officer who visited the ground a year later found it was still covered with white bones. A soldier recalled that the ‘whole ground was still covered with the wrecks of an army, bonnets, cartridge boxes, pieces of belts, old clothes and shoes; the ground in numerous ridges, under which lay many a heap of mouldering bones. It was a melancholy sight; it made us all very dull for a short time.’³⁰

      With another large French army not far away, Wellington did not have long to conduct his operations against Badajoz; and he felt compelled to order an assault upon its walls before his guns, antiquated brass cannon removed from the obsolete fortifications of Elvas, had made adequate breaches. Mistakes were made similar to those which had enraged Wellington outside Almeida: officers again lost their way, and, when the breaches were at last reached, the scaling ladders proved too short.

      The attack failed and, learning that the French were now within a day or two’s march of him, Wellington felt obliged to withdraw across the Portuguese frontier into the Alentejo. He now turned his attention once more to the north and to the town just beyond Fuentes de Oñoro, Ciudad Rodrigo. He surrounded the garrison there in August, hoping it would soon be forced to surrender. But the French appeared in strength to drive the British off. They were commanded now by Massena’s successor, Marshal Marmont, the thirty-seven-year-old duc de Raguse. There was a short engagement at El Bodon on 25 September after which Wellington was forced to withdraw, finding himself in a predicament from which General Craufurd made no noticeable effort to extricate him.

      ‘I am glad to see you safe, General Craufurd,’ he said to him coldly the next morning.

      ‘I was never in danger.’

      ‘Oh! I was.’

      As they parted after this brief exchange, Craufurd was heard to mutter, ‘He’s damned crusty this morning.’³¹ Wellington took no notice. ‘He knew Craufurd’s merits and trusted him’, though the Advocate-General thought it was ‘surprising what he bore from him at times’.³²

      Despite his irritability after the setback at El Bodon and his disappointment after Fuentes de Oñoro, Wellington felt justified in congratulating himself when he withdrew to the Coa in Beira: the French were no longer in Portugal.

      ‘We СКАЧАТЬ