Wellington: A Personal History. Christopher Hibbert

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 have certainly altered the nature of the war in Spain,’ he reported to the Cabinet. ‘It has become, to a certain degree, offensive on our part. The enemy are obliged to concentrate large corps to defend their own acquisitions; they are obliged to collect magazines to support their armies … and I think it probable, from all that I hear, that they are either already reduced, or they must soon come, to the resources of France for the payment of those expenses which must be defrayed in money. As soon as this shall be the case … you may be certain that Bonaparte will be disposed to put an end to it … I think it is not unlikely that peace is speculated upon in France.’³³

      Wellington’s feelings towards the Government had changed of late. He was still short of money but satisfactory numbers of reinforcements were being sent out to him – against the advice of the Duke of York who feared that England was being left undefended – and he looked with confidence to the future.

17 Life at Headquarters

       1810 – 12

       ‘He was in the best of spirits, genial and sans cérémonie; in fact, just like a genuine country squire.’

      IN THOSE WINTER months of 1811 when the fighting died away and the guns were silent, Wellington remained with his army in Portugal. He showed no inclination to go home as so many of his senior officers had done from time to time: he had, after all, no pressing reason to return, no one whom he could not wait patiently to see again, no brother or sister whom he sorely missed, nor wife whom he longed to hold in his arms.

      To those who did want to go home, he listened without much sympathy, whether it was business that called them, or family ties or illness. One morning when James McGrigor was with him and he was in a particularly bad humour after listening to various gloomy reports from the heads of other departments, two officers came in to request leave to go to England. ‘One of them, an officer in the Engineers, first made his request; he had received letters informing him that his wife was dangerously ill, and that the whole of his family were sick. His Lordship quickly replied, “No, no, Sir! I cannot at all spare you at this moment.” The captain, with a mournful face and submissive bow retired. A general officer of a noble family next advanced, saying, “My Lord, I have of late been suffering much from rheumatism –” Without allowing him time to proceed further, Wellington rapidly said, “And you must go to England to get cured of it. By all means. Go there immediately.” The general, surprised at his Lordship’s tone and manner, looked abashed, while he made a profound bow; but to prevent his saying anything in explanation, his Lordship immediately addressed me.’¹