Chapter XXXVII · (continued 2)

The battle of Albuhera was one of the most murderous in modern times. The British loss consisted of nearly 900 killed, 2732 wounded, 544 missing; the Portugueze, of whom only a small part were brought into action, lost about 400; the Spaniards above 2000. The French left 2000 dead on the field; about 1000 were made prisoners; Generals Werle and Pepin were killed. Soult, in his official dispatch, declared, that his whole loss amounted only to 2800 men; but a letter from General Gazan was intercepted, wherein he stated that he had more than 4000 wounded under his charge. The heat, he said, would prove very injurious to them, especially as there were only five surgeons to attend them, and many had died upon the road. This letter was written three days after the action, and as the bad cases die in numbers in the first few days, and the mortality must have been greatly increased by want of rest, of accommodation, and of surgical aid, it was inferred, that the total loss of the enemy could not have been less than 8000 men. Soult is said to have acknowledged, that, in the whole course of his long service, he had never before seen so desperate and bloody a conflict. He is said, also, to have observed, “there is no beating those troops, in spite of their generals! I always thought them bad soldiers, and now I am sure of it; for I turned their right, and penetrated their centre; they were completely beaten; the day was mine, and yet they did not know it, and would not run.” About 300 of his prisoners were put into a convent which had been converted into a prison: they undermined the wall, and escaped with their officers at their head. The peasantry guided them, and supplied them with food on their way, and they rejoined the army in a body on the thirteenth day after the battle.

The official dispatch of the French general was, as usual, falsified for the public. Soult there asserted that, having gained the height, he was surprised to see so great a number of troops, and that he then first learned from a prisoner how Blake with 9000 Spaniards had effected a junction during the night. This discovery, he said, made him resolve not to pursue his victory, but content himself with keeping the position which had been taken from the enemy, and that position he23 retained, ... the enemy, after the carnage which was made among them by Latour Maubourg and the Polish lancers, not having dared to attack him again.

Few battles have ever given the contending powers so high an opinion of each other. The French exhibited the highest possible state of discipline that day: nothing could be more perfect than they were in all their movements; no general could have wished for more excellent instruments, and no soldiers were ever directed by more consummate skill. This was more than counterbalanced by the incomparable bravery of their opponents. The chief loss fell upon the Buffs and the 57th. The first of these regiments went into action with twenty-four officers and 750 rank and file; ... there only remained five officers and thirty-four men to draw rations on the following day. Within the little space where the stress of the battle lay, not less than 7000 men were found lying on the ground, literally reddening the rivulets with blood. Our dead lay in ranks as they had fought, and every wound was in front. A captain of the 57th, who was severely wounded, directed his men to lay him on the ground at the head of his company, and thus continued to give his orders. Marshal Beresford saved his life by his dexterity and personal strength: as he was encouraging his troops after the charge of the Polish lancers, one of these men attacked him; avoiding the thrust, he seized him by the throat, and threw him off his horse; the lancer recovered from his fall to aim a second thrust, but at the moment was shot by one of the general’s orderlies. Sir William Meyers, leading on that brigade which recovered the fortune of the field, exclaimed it would be a glorious day for the fusileers. In ascending the ground his horse was wounded; another was brought, which he had hardly mounted, when a ball struck him under the hip, and passed upward obliquely through the intestines. He did not fall, and attempted to proceed; but this was impossible, and when he was carried off the field he seemed to forget his own sufferings in exultation at beholding the conduct of his brave companions. A heavy rain was falling; there was no shelter near, and Valverde, whither it was thought proper to convey him, was ten miles distant. He would rather have had a tent erected over him; but his servants hoping that he might recover, insisted upon removing him to a place where a bed might be procured. The body of General Houghton was borne past him, on a mule, to be interred at Elvas. Upon seeing it, Sir William desired, that if he should die they would bury him on the spot. He lived, however, to reach Valverde, and till the following day. When his dissolution drew near, he desired that his ring might be taken to his sister, and that she might be told he had died like a soldier. Six of his own men bore him to the grave, and laid him under an olive tree near Valverde. It is to be hoped that a monument will be placed there to mark the spot.

Blake, Castaños, Mendizabal, Ballasteros, Zayas, and Carlos d’España, were in the field, and all distinguished themselves. Blake and Castaños had each an arm grazed. España was run through the hand by a lance. In the heat of the action, when the issue of the battle appeared most hopeless, many of the Spaniards were heard exclaiming to each other, “What will the Conciso say?” ... thus stimulating themselves to new exertion by remembering the honour or dishonour which a free press would bestow, according to their deserts. Of three stand of colours which were taken from the enemy, one was presented to the Cortes. Del Monte moved, that it should be deposited in some church dedicated to the Virgin-Mother, the patroness of the Spains; but Garcia Herreros observed, that the hall in which they met would, after the dissolution of the Cortes, again be used as a church, and it was therefore resolved that the colours should remain there. It was proposed also, that a pillar should be erected in the plains of Albuhera; and that the little town of that name which had been entirely destroyed, should be rebuilt by the nation, and exempted from all rates and taxes for ten years.

♦Siege of Badajoz resumed.♦

By this time the 3rd and 7th divisions arrived from Beira. Lord Wellington re-invested Badajoz on the 25th, and broke ground four days afterward. It was well that the former siege had been interrupted; there would otherwise have been a great sacrifice of men in attempts which, for want of adequate means, must have been unsuccessful. The means, though somewhat increased both in men and materials, were still inadequate; time pressed also; for where Lord Wellington’s efforts were directed, thither would those of the enemy be directed also; Marmont would move from the Tormes toward the Tagus to co-operate with Soult against him, and the disposable force which they might bring together far exceeded all that he could command. Rapid measures, therefore, were necessary, and it was determined to pursue the original plan, but to commence the attacks upon Fort Christoval and the castle at the same time, that the enemy’s attention might be divided. Guns were brought from Elvas, and the officers and gunners of a company of British artillery were distributed among the Portugueze, to supply as far as their numbers went the want of skill in their allies: but the guns were of a soft composition of metal, false in their bore, without any of the modern improvements; the shot were of all shapes and sizes; the howitzers which were used for mortars were not better in their kind than the guns, nor did the shells fit them better; and these wretched brass pieces failed so fast under the heavy firing which was required, that iron guns were ordered from Lisbon.

♦June. Unsuccessful attempts upon Fort Christoval.♦

On the 6th of June the breach in Fort Christoval was reported practicable; it appeared to be so from the trenches; and at the following midnight a storming party of 180 men, conducted by Lieutenant Forster of the Royal Engineers, who had examined the breach the preceding night, moved towards it. The palisades had been destroyed by the battery; the counterscarp at that spot was only four feet deep; the advance, therefore, easily descended into the ditch and reached the foot of the breach, where they discovered that since evening closed the enemy had removed the rubbish, and that the escarp was standing clear nearly seven feet high. The advance, after it had in vain endeavoured to get over this obstacle, might have retired with little loss: but the main body had now entered the ditch; and in that spirit of mad courage which attempts impossible things, they tried with ladders fifteen feet long, which had been sent for mounting the breach with, to escalade the front scarp of the fort where it was twenty feet high; in this they persisted for an hour, while the garrison showered down upon them shells, stones, hand-grenades and combustibles at pleasure, and almost as a sport; nor did they retire till they had lost twelve killed and ninety wounded, more than two-thirds of their number, Forster being among the slain. Not disheartened by this, the besiegers renewed the attempt three nights after: they were provided with ladders of sufficient length; but the enemy were now on the alert, and had strongly garrisoned the fort: the officer who conducted the advance was killed on the glacis, and the officer in command immediately on descending into the ditch: and it could not be ascertained, from the report of the survivors, whether they had attempted a breach which, having, as on the former occasion, been cleared, had been rendered impracticable, or whether their efforts had been misdirected against the face of a demibastion which had been much injured, and might in the night easily be mistaken for a breach: but in one or other of these blind endeavours they persisted desperately under a tremendous shower of the most destructive missiles, till after an hour’s perseverance, when forty had been killed and an hundred wounded, the remainder were ordered to retire.

♦The siege raised.♦

That night’s failure determined Lord Wellington to raise the siege. It had manifestly become hopeless for want of means; and the next morning an intercepted letter from Soult to Marmont was brought in, dated the 5th, and saying that he was ready to begin his march, effect a junction, and complete the object of their wishes. “If they lost no time,” he said, “they might reach the scene of action before the English reinforcements arrived, and Badajoz would be saved.” By other communications, Lord Wellington knew that Drouet’s corps had marched from Toledo, and would probably join Soult that very day, and that Marmont might be expected at Merida in a few days; for this general, after having patroled on the 6th to Fuentes d’Onoro and Navedeaver, as a reconnoissance, and to cover the march of a convoy to Ciudad Rodrigo, began his march the next day to the south, by way of the Puerto de Baños and Placencia: he crossed the Tagus at Almaraz, an important point, where the French, having re-established the bridge, had covered it by strong batteries. In consequence of this information Lord Wellington began to move the stores to the rear, as soon as darkness had closed. The whole loss had been nine officers and 109 men killed, twenty-five officers and 342 men wounded and prisoners: but the numerical inadequately represents the real loss in those operations for which men are either selected for their skill, or adventure in the hope of distinguishing themselves. On the 12th the siege was finally raised; but the blockade was still maintained, and Lord Wellington posted his army near Albuhera to cover it and to hold in check an enemy who would not again venture upon giving battle, ♦Junction of Soult and Marmont.♦ unless with an overpowering force. The French, however, had now collected all their troops from the two Castilles, except a small garrison at Madrid, all the remains of Massena’s army, and all their force from Andalusia, except what was sufficient for Sebastiani and Victor to keep up a show of inactive strength within positions where experience had now fully shown that no vigorous attack was to be apprehended. Thus they brought together a greater force than the allies could oppose to them; and though Lord Wellington was not so inferior in numbers as to have felt fear, or even doubt, concerning the issue of an action, the relative resources of the allies in men, as those resources were then managed, were not such that they could afford to win a second battle of Albuhera. The blockade therefore was raised after Marmont and Soult had effected their junction: the enemy entered Badajoz, and the allies, recrossing the Guadiana, took up a line within the Portugueze frontier. There the corps from the north, under Sir Brent Spencer, joined them. It had crossed the Tagus at Villa Velha by a floating bridge, carrying about twenty horses at a time. The spirit of our light division at this time was such that the men would suffer any thing on a march rather than be seen straggling; and in this movement two men, when ascending the hills to Niza, carried that spirit so far that they actually died of heat in the ranks. ♦The allies take a position within the Portugueze frontier.♦ The whole army being thus united, a position was chosen in which battle would have been given if the French had attempted to enter Portugal: it was on the heights behind Campo Mayor, and the troops were bivouacked on the Caya in readiness to occupy it: their line extended from Arronches to Jurumenha, that of the enemy from Merida to Badajoz. But though the French had brought together not less than 70,000 men including 8000 cavalry, while the cavalry opposed to them were only 3500, and the whole force not more than 56,000, they contented themselves with making a reconnoisance in considerable strength. One body of their horse got in the rear of a piquet of the 11th light dragoons: the situation was ill chosen; the regiment had arrived from England but a few days before; the men, therefore, were inexperienced in such service, and ignorant of the ground: they mistook the enemy for Portugueze; and every man, sixty-nine in number, except the lieutenant in the advance, was taken. This was the only advantage they could obtain. Another body at the same time failed in an endeavour to ascertain the position and number of the allies: their intention was perceived; the main body of the troops was concealed from them behind the hills; and after some hours’ manœuvring, some skirmishing, and some firing from Campo Mayor, the guns of which fortress flanked the front of Lord Wellington’s position, they desisted from their baffled attempt.

♦Soult boasts of his success.♦

Soult affected to regret that a general action had not been brought on. He magnified the merit of the defence of Badajoz, saying, that it would be cited in military history as one of the most memorable exploits of its kind; and he magnified the importance of the junction of the two armies on the Guadiana, calling it one of the most marked events of the war in Spain. This general had a more than common interest in blazoning forth a success which covered his late defeat. “Thus,” said he, “the signal victory which was gained at Albuhera has been ascertained in favour of the imperial army: the main object which I had in view was then accomplished, that of making a diversion in favour of Badajoz, and enabling that fortress to prolong its resistance. It is now evident that the battle of Albuhera gained us at least twenty days, during which we were enabled to make arrangements for bringing up new reinforcements, and the army of Portugal was able to take part in the operations: thus the second object which I had in view in making my first movement has been also accomplished; and the troops which fought at Albuhera have not ceased a single day to act upon the offensive against the enemy.” Beyond all doubt Marshal Soult was one of the ablest generals of his age: his operations at this time were ultimately successful, but his earnestness to prove that he had gained a victory at Albuhera only shows how deeply he felt the defeat.

The French government were elated with an advantage which came seasonably after the various disgraces that the French arms had suffered in the Peninsula. “The English,” said they, “are again to learn, and by a mighty thunderbolt ... (the raising of the siege of Badajoz is a presage of it), that they cannot with impunity leave the element of which they have usurped the empire.” The English, however, had long been accustomed to hear of these thunderbolts, and to defy the more tangible weapons of the enemy. Soult said, in his official account, “that they appeared to have given us Spain entirely, and to be concentrating themselves for the defence of Lisbon: they felt their inability to support the contest; and every thing,” he added, “induced him to think that when the army of reserve should have arrived upon Almeida, they would feel the impossibility even of maintaining themselves at Lisbon.” While the enemy threw out these boastful anticipations, Lord Wellington remained in his position, watching their movements, and certain that they could not long subsist the force which they had brought together.

♦Blake’s movements.♦

Before the allies retreated across the Guadiana, a plan had been arranged between General Blake and Lord Wellington, that the former should make a movement into the country of Niebla, distract the enemy’s attention by threatening their rear, and take advantage of whatever favourable opportunity this concentration of the French forces might give him. Accordingly the Spaniards set out on the 18th from Jurumenha, and on the 22nd reached Mertola, ... the distance is about 110 miles, ... but it was a most exhausting march in the midst of summer, through a dry country, for troops half of whom were barefoot, and whose commissariat was in the most deplorable state. The provisions were never sufficient to allow full rations; and though the Spaniards supported fatigue and hunger with their characteristic patience, men will not continue to undergo such privations without a strong hope that some adequate success will recompense them; and Blake had unhappily acquired the character of being an unfortunate leader.

From Mertola, he embarked his artillery for Ayamonte. The horse swam the Guadiana, the men crossed it by a temporary bridge of boats; and after resting two days to refresh the troops, he marched ♦June 30. He fails at Niebla and returns to Cadiz.♦ against Niebla. Niebla is an old town, which had fallen to such decay, that its population at this time did not exceed an hundred persons: its walls, however, were less dilapidated than its houses, and the French had repaired its castle so as to render it a post of respectable strength, from whence they domineered over the surrounding country. Blake found it stronger than he expected: he attempted an escalade in the night with ladders, which were too short, as well as too few, for the success of the enterprise; consequently the attempt failed, though the garrison did not consist of more than 300 men. He remained three days before the place, which gave the French governor of Seville time to take the field against him, and make some prisoners before his army could reach the mouth of the Guadiana, and re-embark for Cadiz. Great numbers of his men deserted during this ill-conducted expedition. Blake possessed considerable talents, but the good which those talents might have produced, when he was called to the Regency, was in great measure frustrated by his jealousy of the English. At Albuhera he seemed to have overcome this unworthy feeling; but it returned upon him, and Lord Wellington remarked, in his public dispatches, that neither General Castaños nor himself had received any intelligence from him since he began his march from Jurumenha.

♦The French armies separate.♦

This movement, therefore, which might have greatly annoyed the enemy, and of which such expectations had been raised, that it was at one time reported and believed Blake had actually entered Seville, ended only in the diminution of the army and of the general’s reputation. But Lord Wellington had taken his measures too wisely to suffer any other evil than that of disappointed hope from this failure. He knew that the enemy could not possibly long continue to subsist their forces when thus concentrated; and accordingly, as he expected, they broke up from the Guadiana about the middle of July, having fortified the old castles of Medellin and Truxillo to strengthen their hold upon Extremadura. Soult returned to Seville; and Marmont, recrossing the Tagus at Almaraz, went again to his command in the north. Lord Wellington then moved his whole army to the left, and cantoned them in Lower Beira, where he remained, waiting till time and opportunity should offer for the blow which he was preparing to strike.