Wellington: A Personal History. Christopher Hibbert

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      Many of the papers which Wellington studied in those early morning hours in his room or tent at headquarters were orders written by Napoleon to his marshals in Spain and sent on to the Inglese by the guerrillas who kept careful watch upon the roads that led to France, pouncing down by night on horsemen and convoys with sharp knives in strong brown hands. Their contribution to the Spanish cause Wellington valued more highly than that of the Spanish levies.²⁶ He listened with admiration, if sometimes with a frisson of horror, to stories of their exploits, of the achievements of such guerrilla leaders as one known as Moreno who was said to have once killed seven French soldiers with a single shot from his huge blunderbuss, the recoil of which dislocated his shoulder, and who, in presenting some captured silver to the town of his birth, arranged upon one of the pieces a selection of French ears. ‘It is probable,’ Wellington had written to Spencer Perceval at the beginning of 1810, ‘that, although the [Spanish] armies may be lost and the principal Juntas and authorities of the provinces may be dispersed, the war of partizans may continue.’²⁷

      It had continued. So had the dangerous work and intelligence activities of Wellington’s scouts and spies who cooperated with the guerrillas, of men like Sir John Waters, who could ‘assume the character of Spaniards of every degree and station’, and Patrick Curtis, Rector of the Irish College at Salamanca, Professor of Astronomy there and future Archbishop of Armagh, who was arrested by the French in 1811, and John Grant, known as a ‘master of disguise’, and his namesake, Colquhoun Grant, a brilliant linguist (unlike his other namesake, the arrogant Hussar), one of those ‘exploring officers’ of whom Wellington said ‘no army in the world ever produced the like’, adding, ‘Grant was worth a brigade to me.’²⁸

      The Imperial commands which, intercepted by guerrillas, were handed to these ‘exploring officers’, were almost invariably impracticable and sometimes absurd, based upon faulty intelligence and misconceptions as to the nature of the Spanish terrain. They ignored the fact that the British now held the initiative in the Peninsula, and that the French, with limited supplies and transport in the bleak terrain of western Spain, could not possibly seize Lisbon, as Napoleon so insistently demanded.

      Wellington, however, was free to move against the French; and in January 1812 he did so, marching towards Ciudad Rodrigo, digging trenches in front of it and, on the 19th of the month, after a most hastily conducted siege, storming it.²⁹ The assaulting troops charged into what one of them called ‘an inferno of fire’. The Connaught Rangers were sent forward by the gruff Welsh commander of the 3rd Division, Thomas Picton, with the order, ‘It is not my intention to spend any powder this evening. We’ll do this with the cold iron.’³⁰

      Their Colonel, Henry Mackinnon, was blown up and killed by a mine. Other officers fell around him: the fiery-tempered General Craufurd of the Light Division was wounded in the back; Colonel John Colborne of the 52nd, tall and patrician with a nose like Wellington’s, was shot through the shoulder; Lieutenant John Gurwood, one day to be Wellington’s private secretary, was severely wounded in the skull; Major George Napier, who had volunteered to command the storming party, lost his right arm which had already been broken by a shell fragment three days before.

      The heavy casualties were not in vain. The operation was completely successful and – as Wellington, in a dispatch of unusual though well-justified self-congratulation, reported to the Cabinet – was performed ‘in half the time’ he had told them it would take, and ‘in less than half that which the French spent in taking the same place from the Spaniards’.³¹ He did not, however, mention the scenes which had marred the success once the British soldiers entered the town. Many were soon incapably drunk and, firing at doors and windows in the square beneath the twelfth-century cathedral, they killed and wounded some of their comrades. Neither the oaths of Picton, in Wellington’s opinion ‘the most foul-mouthed fellow that ever lived’, nor the calls of trumpets nor yet the efforts of officers who hit the men over the head with the butt ends of broken muskets could restore order or prevent the pillaging of the joints of meat, loaves of bread, clothes and shoes which the men, marching out of the town the next morning, hung round their necks or carried on the points of their bayonets. Passing Picton they demanded a cheer. ‘Here then, you drunken set of brave rascals,’ he replied indulgently. ‘Hurrah! We’ll soon be at Badajoz!’³²

      There were many who were never to get to Badajoz. Over a thousand men had been killed or wounded; an uncertain number of deserters found hiding in the town were shot as they knelt beside their shared grave; General Craufurd, his spine shattered, anxious in his last moments to be reconciled to Wellington with whom he had had his differences, begged forgiveness for having sometimes been a croaker in the past, talking, so Wellington said, in puzzled sorrow, ‘as they do in a novel’, before dying after five days’ agony and being buried in the breaches through which his men had stormed.³³

18 Badajoz, Salamanca and Madrid

       1812

       ‘I assure you I actually could not help crying.’

      IN ENGLAND, Craufurd was mourned as a national hero. His brave death was recognized by votes of both Houses of Parliament; and monuments were erected to him and to Colonel Mackinnon in St Paul’s Cathedral.

      Wellington was highly honoured also. Over the past few months he and his army had been severely criticized. General Sir Banastre Tarleton, who had achieved fame as a ruthless cavalry commander in the American War, had been tireless in his sniping; the Whigs had been eager to seize upon any setback; Henry Brougham had been unable to hide his pleasure upon learning of the failure of the assault on Badajoz; Creevey had reported that Lord Wellington and the campaign in Portugal were now ‘out of fashion’ at court; and the Prince of Wales, who had become Prince Regent now that his father was considered incurably insane, had declined to discuss the matter. When someone had spoken of Wellington’s campaigns in the north of the Peninsula, the Regent, his mind preoccupied with the behaviour of his detested wife, had exclaimed, ‘Damn the north! and damn the south! and damn Wellington! The question is, how am I to be rid of this damned Princess of Wales?’¹

      Now all past failures and disappointments were forgiven and forgotten. The British Government, the Prince Regent and the Spanish Cortes all agreed that the capture of Ciudad Rodrigo was an achievement in which Wellington could justifiably take pride. The Cortes created him Duque de Ciudad Rodrigo; the Government asked a willing Parliament to grant him another annuity of £2,000. Even General Tarleton joined in the universal praise; only the radical Sir Francis Burdett voiced doubts as to the hero’s ability;² and on 28 February 1812 the Prince Regent created him Earl of Wellington.

      Yet there were further setbacks and sorrows soon to be borne. With Ciudad Rodrigo now safely in his possession, Wellington turned south for Badajoz. Anxious to take the place before Soult or Marmont reached it, he hurried forward the necessary preparations for siege warfare – the digging of trenches and parallels, saps and mines, the building of batteries and bulwarks.

      The assault was launched on the dark night of 6 April and, as some had thought at Ciudad Rodrigo, Wellington launched it too soon.³ The first storming column struggled to clamber up the slopes and across the imperfect breaches, treading on to the sharp spikes of caltrops and planks studded with the points of nails, being blown apart by mines, mutilated by shells and grenades, burned by fire-balls and knocked over by powder barrels, coming up against chevaux-de-frise made from Spanish sword blades, carrying scaling ladders, many of which proved too short, taunted by the shouts of the French troops on the walls and with the piercing sound of their own bugles ringing in their ears.