Authors: Richard Holmes
George Canning declared that ‘Britain would proceed upon the principle that any nation in Europe which stirs up with a determination to oppose [France] immediately becomes our ally.’
26
Wellesley told the cabinet that this was ‘a crisis in which a great effort might be made with advantage’, and emphasised that his own force at Cork could easily be sent to the Peninsula rather than to Venezuela. Before the end of the month, he was ‘closing the government in such a manner that I may give it up, and taking the command of a corps for service’.
27
The Venezuelan patriot, Miranda, became so agitated when Wellesley told him the news in a London street that ‘he was so loud and angry, that I told him I would walk on first a little that we might not attract the notice of everybody passing’. ‘You will be lost, nothing can save you,’ shouted Miranda. ‘That, however, is your affair; but what grieves me is that there was never such an opportunity thrown away.’
28
Wellesley handed over his Irish responsibilities to John Wilson Croker, MP for Downpatrick, and prepared to take his little army to Portugal. One evening the two men were musing over the port in the Wellesleys’ Harley Street dining-room after Kitty had retired upstairs to the drawing-room. Conversation on the Dublin Water Bill palled, and Sir Arthur fell silent. Croker asked him what he was thinking about. Wellesley replied:
Why, to say the truth, I am thinking of the French that I am going to fight. I have not seen them since the campaign in Flanders, when they were capital soldiers, and a dozen years of victory under Bonaparte must have made them better still. They have, besides, it seems, a new system of strategy which has out-manoeuvred and overwhelmed all the armies of Europe. ’Tis enough to make one thoughtful, but no matter: my die is cast, they may overwhelm me, but I don’t think they will out-manoeuvre me. First, because I am not afraid of them as everyone else seems to be; and secondly, because, if what I hear of their system of manoeuvres is true, I think it a false one against steady troops.
29
He said his farewells, staying with his sister Anne, now married to Charles Smith of Hampton, her first husband having died in 1794, and with the home secretary Lord Hawkesbury. On his way to Holyhead to catch the Dublin packet, he called on the Ladies of Llangollen, who gave him a Spanish prayer book from which he could study the language. His mind was already running in the groove of military detail. The troops at Cork were to be landed frequently from their transports as ‘it will tend much to the health of the men and make them feel less unpleasantly the heat and confinement’, and ‘small tin kettles’ were to be procured for the coming campaign.
30
On 12 July 1808 he sailed in HMS
Donegal
, soon shifting to the faster HMS
Crocodile
. It took him a week to reach La Coruña, where he heard encouraging news of Spanish successes, and told Castlereagh that: ‘It is impossible to convey to you an idea of the sentiment which prevails here in favour of the Spanish cause.’
31
He was to be reinforced by a contingent from Gibraltar under Major General Sir Brent Spencer, designated his second-in-command, to whom he outlined his strategy in a letter written aboard
Crocodile
off the mouth of the Tagus on 26 July. Whether or not the Spanish prospered in their struggle, ‘nothing we can do can be so useful to them as to get possession of and organise a good army in Portugal … whether Spain is to continue or to fail, Portugal is an object, and your presence here is most necessary’.
32
This plan, in so many respects a classic example of an expeditionary strategy that combined sea-power with a reluctance to engage a major land power in a theatre where its strength could be concentrated, formed the basis of his conduct during the whole Peninsular war, and was to influence him during the Waterloo campaign of 1815. British command of the sea would guarantee a line of communication to Portugal, and a firm base there would enable the British to operate in Spain, taking as much or as little of the war as they chose. Wellesley also told Spencer that:
I did not know what the words ‘second-in-command’ meant … that I alone commanded the army … that … I would treat … him … with the most entire confidence, and would leave none of my views or intentions unexplained; but that I would have no second-in-command in the sense of his having anything like superintending control …
33
The question of command was soon raised once more. Wellesley stopped briefly at Oporto, where he made arrangements with the bishop for the supply of oxen and mules to the army. Then, after discussions with Admiral Sir Charles Cotton, he prepared to land his army amidst the thunderous surf of Mondego Bay, a hundred miles north of Lisbon, for the Tagus estuary contained not only French-manned vessels, but also a Russian fleet whose attitude was uncertain.
In Mondego Bay, Wellesley received a letter from Castlereagh containing both good news and bad. The army in Portugal was to be increased by the addition of 15,000 men, including a force under Lieutenant General Sir John Moore, which had previously been dispatched to Sweden. Both the king and the Duke of York had already complained that Wellesley was too junior to command the expedition, and its reinforcement made his supersession inevitable. He was told that Sir Hew Dalrymple was to be sent out to command, with Sir Harry Burrard as his second-in-command; and four more lieutenant generals, all senior to Wellesley, were to make their way to Portugal. Sir Arthur sent a courteous reply to Castlereagh, thanking him for his support and emphasising that he would do his best to ensure the army’s success regardless of his own position, and would not hurry ahead with operations before his seniors arrived ‘in order that I may acquire the credit of the success’. He was, however, more candid in a latter to the Duke of Richmond: ‘I hope that I shall have beat latter before any of them arrive, and then they may do as they please with me.’
34
His first steps were entirely characteristic. A General Order stressed that Portugal was friendly territory and its inhabitants were to be treated accordingly. Their ‘religious prejudices’ were to be respected, with officers removing their hats, soldiers saluting and sentries presenting arms when the Host passed them in the streets. A stirring proclamation to the people of Portugal announced that his men had landed ‘with every sentiment of faith, friendship and honour’, and were wholly committed to ‘the noble struggle against the tyranny and usurpation of France’.
35
He met Major General Bernadino Freire, the local Portuguese commander, arranged for his men to be given 5,000 muskets and sets of infantry equipment, and appointed Lieutenant Colonel Nicholas Trant, British military agent in Portugal (described by Wellesley as ‘a very good officer, but as drunken a dog as ever lived’) as his liaison officer with Freire.
On 10 August Wellesley marched from Mondego Bay to Leiria with some 15,000 soldiers. It was a hard journey for heavily laden men who were not yet acclimatised to the heat of a Portuguese summer. At Leiria, Wellesley had a disagreement with Freire over the best route to Lisbon, and it was eventually agreed that Wellesley would take with him 1,600 Portuguese under Trant. Wellesley was badly off for cavalry, which made effective reconnaissance difficult, but knew that he faced two French armies, one under Delaborde, blocking the Lisbon road at Obidos, two days march to the south, and another under Loison, away to the east, where it had been dealing roughly with Portuguese insurgents. Wellesley suspected that even if they united, these two forces would not outnumber him, and so he pushed on down the Lisbon road. The first contact of the campaign took place on 15 August 1808 at Brilos, near Obidos. A company of the 95
th
Rifles drove in a French outpost, but pushed on too far and collided with the enemy rearguard, losing an officer and twenty-six men in the process. Wellesley’s brother-in-law, Captain Hercules Pakenham, was slightly wounded.
Wellesley entered Obidos on 16 August 1808, and from its church tower, he could see that Delaborde had taken up a strong position with his 4,000 men at Roliça, about eight miles away. On the 17
th
, Wellesley launched a well-planned attack, with three columns moving up to fix Delaborde in front of the village while two others felt for his flanks. Delaborde, however, was too experienced a campaigner to fall for that, and pulled back to an even stronger position south of Roliça, where Wellesley tried to repeat his ploy. Unfortunately, Lieutenant Colonel the Hon. G. A. F. Lake, commanding 1/29
th
, attacked the French centre and found a gully that took him into the heart of the French position where he was killed and his battalion cut to pieces. This provoked Wellesley into launching a general attack before the flanking columns were in position, and Delaborde conducted a skilful fighting withdrawal, though he had to abandon three of his five guns. It was hardly a crushing victory but it was certainly a promising start, and stands as an early rebuttal of the myth that Wellesley was simply a defensive general.
There were now reinforcements off the coast, and on 18 August Wellesley sent orders for them to proceed to the Maceira estuary, fifteen miles south-west of Roliça, and marched his army there to cover the landing. His army was now 17,000 men strong. Burrard – Dalrymple’s second-in-command – had also arrived, and on the 20
th
, Wellesley met him aboard his ship. Burrard, with a better idea of French strength, ordered Wellesley to keep the army where it was until it was joined by Sir John Moore’s force, which was to land in Mondego Bay. Wellesley rode back to the army, drawn up astride the Maceira on two long ridges with the village of Vimiero to their front.
36
In the small hours of 21 August, he heard that Delaborde and Loison, now united under the command of Junot, were approaching not from the south, but from the east, and after dawn he shifted troops from the western ridge to reinforce those on the eastern, and threw two brigades forwards onto the flat-topped Vimiero Hill, just south of the village.
The first French blow fell on the brigades on Vimiero Hill. They were drawn up with four companies of 2/95
th
and the whole of 5/60
th
, all armed with rifles, on the forward slope of the hill, forming a strong skirmish line, with the other five battalions further back, three just behind the crest and two deeper, in reserve. The hill was attacked by two large French columns, each about thirty men broad and at least forty deep, marching behind a screen of skirmishers and supported by field guns. The French skirmishers were checked by the British riflemen, who did not fall back until the main columns came into play. It was not until the riflemen retired that they unmasked the British guns, which had time to get off only a round apiece before column met line.
The first battle on Vimiero Hill that morning was a microcosm of what was to happen elsewhere that day, and on a dozen other dry, red-earthed Peninsular battlefields over the next few years. The northern French column encountered 1/50
th
drawn up in a line two deep, so that every one of its 800 muskets could bear. The first volley crashed out at 100 yards, and was followed by repeated volleys at 15-second intervals as the range shortened. As the firefight went on, the flanks of the 50
th
gradually edged forward, like a rather flat letter U, to enfold the head of the column. The slightly convex curl of the slope meant that the 50
th
had been engaged neither by skirmishers nor by artillery before the column arrived. Columns, whatever their nationality, could indeed break lines that were already weakened and disconcerted before the column came up to administer a shock, which was as much psychological as it was physical. But an intact line was another matter and faced with this one, General Thomières, the French brigade commander, attempted to deploy from column into line to meet fire with fire. The drill movement was a familiar one, but this was neither the time nor the place to carry it out, with soldiers out of breath from toiling up the hill, galled by the fire of skirmishers and artillery, and now under sustained close-range musketry. It is no reflection on French bravery to say that they could neither deploy nor stand, but broke away down the hill with the riflemen running out to shoot at them as they fell back.
37
Successive attacks, spreading out against the whole of Wellesley’s eastern flank, were just as gallantly launched, but fared no better, and now British guns, firing shrapnel for the first time in Europe, were reaching out to rake columns long before they came into contact with the line. Rifleman Benjamin Harris of the 95
th
, busy with his Baker rifle in the skirmish line, saw ‘regular lanes opened through their ranks as they advanced, which were immediately closed up again as they marched steadily on. Whenever we saw a round shot go through the mass, we raised a shout of delight.’
38
As one of the attacks ebbed back Wellesley, on hand at the crucial spot, as was so often the case, launched the 20
th
Light Dragoons and some Portuguese cavalry in a counter-attack. Sergeant George Landsheit charged with the 20
th
.
‘Now, Twentieth! Now!’ shouted Sir Arthur, while his staff clapped their hands and gave us a cheer, the sound of which was still in our ears when we put our horses to their speed. The Portuguese likewise pushed forward, but through the dust which entirely enveloped us, the enemy threw in a fire which seemed to have the effect of paralysing altogether our handsome allies. Right and left they pulled up, as if by word of command, and we never saw more of them till the battle was over. But we went very differently to work. In an instant we were in the heart of the French cavalry, cutting and hacking, and upsetting men and horses in the most extraordinary manner possible, till they broke and fled in every direction, and then we fell on the infantry.
39