Wellington’s Engineers: Military Engineering on the Peninsular War 1808-1814 (34 page)

Note 1
. Fletcher was absent from the Peninsula from January to April 1809 following the Corunna campaign. The senior Engineer officer in Lisbon was Captain Peter Patton who remained there when Moore’s army advanced in October 1808. There was a temporary internal quarrel in late 1808 when George Landmann tried to claim seniority in Portugal. This was rejected by both the army commander, Sir John Craddock, and the Board of Ordnance. Landmann was part of the Gibraltar garrison and had been ordered back there. He managed to avoid doing so for several months, a skill he demonstrated several times throughout the war. Patton was superseded by Captain Stephen Chapman on 4 March 1809 on his arrival from England.

Note 2
. I believe that Elphinstone was supposed to take over command from Fletcher. He should have sailed for the Peninsula in December 1812 and Fletcher did not arrive in England until the first week of January 1813. Elphinstone did not arrive in Portugal until early February and did not arrive at HQ until 4 March 1813. Fletcher returned six weeks later and Elphinstone was immediately sent back to Lisbon.

Note 3
. Technically, Elphinstone was in command, but Burgoyne was with Wellington’s army until Elphinstone arrived at HQ. Wellington had effectively kept a succession of senior artillery officers in Lisbon to allow Dickson to retain command with the army.

This includes officers who served in the east coast campaigns. It does not include officers who served in the Mediterranean.

Whilst the Peninsular War was won on the battlefield, we must not forget the less visible work that allowed the army to arrive at it. One key component was the logistics that delivered food and ammunition to the army on the move, but another equally important but almost unseen task was the work that went into mapping the country in which Wellington fought. From the first days of 1808 up until 1814, officers were dispatched far and wide, producing detailed and accurate maps of Portugal and Spain. This was something that the French were never able to do other than in the small areas that they held in strength. A British officer could ride alone through most of the Iberian Peninsula, knowing that he was unlikely to be molested by the locals, often being hidden and fed by them when the need arose. A French officer attempting to do the same was more likely to come to an unpleasant end.

One of the key differences between the Allied and French armies was that Wellington had better maps than the French. This is a little surprising, particularly as the French had free access to the whole of the Iberian Peninsula throughout much of 1807 and 1808. When the French commander Junot arrived in Lisbon in 1807, he ordered his Chief Engineer, Vincent, to complete surveys of the surrounding area and then across the rest of Portugal using Portuguese army engineers. Raeuber
¹
said that the Portuguese did not have large-scale maps of their own territory at this time. Whilst that would appear surprising, it is probably even more surprising that England did not either! It was the threat of a French invasion that forced the British government to rectify the failure and accurately map the south coast of England. This omission was being dealt with as a matter of urgency in the early years of the nineteenth century. There was no decent mapping of Ireland for another twenty-five years and parts of Scotland had only been mapped as a result of the 1745 rebellion.
²
The first posting for newly-commissioned Royal Engineer officers was to spend six months working on the Ordnance Survey to develop some basic skills before their first official posting.

The results of Junot’s order included the publication of probably the first modern map of Portugal, the
Carta militar das principaes estradas de Portugal
, which was produced by the Portuguese engineer Lourenc o Homem da Cunha d’Eca and published in 1808. When Junot evacuated Portugal after the Convention of Cintra, the Portuguese map was shipped back to France, but incredibly was not given to Masséna for the third invasion in 1810. Raeuber suggested the likely reasons were that there was not time to make copies or they were too valuable to give to Masséna.
³
I find both of these reasons difficult to accept. The French had two years to make copies and the whole point of the French military archives was to make information available to their forces. Having said that, it is difficult to come up with a plausible alternative. Surely Junot must have told Masséna that he had good maps made! Or maybe he didn’t? Raeuber argues more convincingly that Masséna was ‘feeling’ his way forward when he advanced into Portugal. He was reported to be reliant on the map of Spain and Portugal created by Lopez. This map was not produced by topographical survey but by sending questionnaires out to priests and civil servants, asking them to describe the immediate vicinity to their town or parish. Lopez then constructed his map based on their responses.
⁴
The result was a map that, whilst beautifully printed, was very inaccurate. The whole campaign could have ended very differently if Masséna had taken the best road when he invaded Portugal rather than the worst.

The start of the Peninsular War saw the Allies in no better position that the French. Before Richard Fletcher returned to the Peninsula in April 1809 he asked for the following maps:

The map of the Pyrenees about to be published by Arrowsmith which will include the provinces of Aragon, Catalonia, Navarre and Biscay. The map of Portugal by Lopez and [the] Mentelle map of Spain. The best plan extant of Cartagena and Barcelona and also that of Cadiz by Faden.

Mr Faden himself replied:

Herewith you receive all the maps contained in your order which can be procured. Lopez’s maps of Portugal have been sold off some time. I have the one by Jefferey in 6 sheets.
⁵
The plans of Cartagena are likewise all sold. I am engraving it at this time – Barcelona has not yet been published at Madrid.

So, the Royal Engineers entered the war with very few maps and even the ones they had were of doubtful quality. It would seem that the Army was in no better situation. An internal letter in the Ordnance in March 1809 noted that ‘the Portuguese maps of Memoire[?] are with the Quarter Master-General’s Department by the Master-General’s permission, and when returned to us shall be immediately forwarded to you’.
⁶

Once the officers were in the field, they realised that some of the published maps were poor. Captain John Squire RE complained, perhaps unfairly:

All the maps of Portugal, particularly in this part of the country are extremely incorrect – Faden’s last map … is as bad as any of them. The Carta Militar published at Lisbon can never be depended upon – To form a good judgement, it is necessary to actually visit every part of the frontier.
⁷

And this is exactly what many engineers, including Squire, found themselves doing in the early part of the war. Captain George Ross RE commented in a similar fashion on the book and map published by fellow Ordnance officer, William Granville Eliot RA:

As to Captain Elliot’s [
sic
] book I have seen nothing of it but the maps – at least a thing which was taken out of the book by a General here to travel by and I confess it appears to me to be as little entitled to the name as any thing I ever saw – Capt E. seems to have made a bad copy, no I ought not to say a copy – it is so much worse than the Carta Militaire [
sic
] – He scratched some hills at random to make it pass as a drawing of his own.
⁸

Commenting on his first campaign and the period immediately after the Battle of Roliça in 1808, Wellington wrote:

I should have pushed the advanced guard as far as the heights of Mafra, and should have halted the main body about four or five miles from that place. By this movement the enemy’s position at Torres Vedras would have been turned and I should have brought the army into a country of which I had an excellent map and topographical accounts, which had been drawn up for the use of the late Sir Charles Stewart; and the battle which it was evident would be fought in a few days would have had for its field a county of which we had a knowledge.
⁹

Resolving the issue of maps was a high priority for Wellington and he utilised all available resources.

Both the Ordnance and the QMG’s Department issued comprehensive instructions to their officers on what they expected. The original instructions to the officers of the QMG Department started ‘One of the first duties of the officers of the QMG’s Department is to acquire a knowledge of the country, which is the theatre of the operations of the army’.
¹⁰
The wording below comes from the ‘Instructions for officers of the Corps of Royal Engineers when attached to columns, or moving through the Country’. The wording in the QMG’s printed instructions is almost identical:

The Engineer when moving with a column or otherwise will observe the general features of the country through which they pass, whether hilly, level, woody, open, or enclosed, the state and breadth of the roads, whether they are practicable for Artillery, their bearings by compass, and the passes and positions on the route. Such parts of the country as may be sufficiently open and level to enable cavalry to act with advantage should be remarked. The rivers should particularly be attended to, every breadth and depth at the time and place of passing, and as far as can be ascertained by enquiry their state at other seasons of the year …
¹¹

The diaries of engineer officers are full of descriptions of the roads, hills and rivers they passed. Portuguese Engineers were also used, e.g. General Mackenzie reporting they were active ‘in upper Beira where almost all the best Portuguese Engineers are now employed on surveys’.
¹²
Most reports by Royal Engineer officers were textual, sometimes accompanied by a drawing. The QMG’s Department tended to use a standard template for their reports (see below).

The Royal Engineer officers appeared more active on survey and reconnaissance work in the early years of the war. In 1808 engineer officers were surveying all the main routes between Portugal and Spain and also travelled with Moore’s army. They were also very active in 1809 and 1810 whilst Wellington was still very much on the defensive and operated in or near Portugal. They seemed to do less surveying as the war went on. Royal Engineer reports tended to be more detailed and take more notice of the terrain they were passing through. There was also a greater emphasis on collecting details of any fortifications and the ability to move artillery. The greater accuracy, however, required much greater time to prepare. Murray, the QMG, was less interested in the detail and more interested in the rapid collection of data. He strongly favoured a quick approach to sketching and a focus on roads and accommodation for the troops.

Whilst the engineers contributed in an
ad hoc
way to the knowledge of the theatre of operations, officers of the Quarter Master-General’s Department and the Royal Staff Corps did the bulk of the mapping. Officers were dispatched across the whole of Portugal with orders to produce maps at a standard scale of 4 miles to the inch (1:250,000). A number of names come up again and again in correspondence including Sturgeon, Todd, Colleton and Staveley from the Royal Staff Corps and Broke, Bainbrigge, Pierrepoint, Bell, Balck and Mitchell from the QMG’s Department. Mitchell
¹³
was retained after the war to revisit the main scenes of actions and accurately map them. These maps eventually were published in the rare and beautiful
Wyld’s Atlas
.

The main interest of the QMG was the movement of troops so the focus was primarily on the roads and the villages they passed through. A standard template was used to collect the information that was required with a simple style of drawing to illustrate the route. There are some examples of Royal Engineers also using the standard template e.g. In the National Archives, there is a report by John Burgoyne of the route from Alcantara to Ciudad Rodrigo. Burgoyne also noted on the report that it was copied from the original of Captain Godby RA.
¹⁴

QMG – Report template

The extensive mapping work carried out under the orders of Murray led to Wellington having significantly better understanding of the terrain in which he was operating, and this often gave him the edge when manoeuvring his forces.

Along with the extensive mapping work, from the start of the Peninsular War Wellington recognised the value in having people with local knowledge attached to the army. The practice used by both sides of asking locals to direct the routes were fraught with danger because their knowledge was often very limited. The Corps of Guides was formed in 1808/9 under George Scovell. Wellington explained their purpose as being:

To make enquiries, and have a knowledge of roads, but to have a class of person in the army who shall march with the heads of columns, and interpret between the officers commanding them, and the people of the country guiding them.
¹⁵

The initial establishment was for one sergeant, one corporal and eighteen privates.
¹⁶
Wellington described the Corps as made up of ‘foreign deserters’, which seems an odd use of such people. The Corps was clearly found to be useful, as it remained in existence throughout the war. By May 1809 it had grown to four lieutenants, four cornets, six sergeants, six corporals, two farriers, and twenty privates. Its numbers continued to grow, and by November 1810 there were fifty privates; by September 1811 there were eighty, finally reaching 150 in December 1812.
¹⁷
Apart from their duties as guides, some of them were used for surveying and mapping. There are a number of maps in the National Archives drawn by Lieutenant Agostino Albano da Silvera.

Wellington’s superiority in mapping became less effective in the later stages of the war when he approached and crossed the Spanish frontier. His maps and his ability to create them would have been more restricted, just when he needed them most to operate over the terrain in southern France with its numerous rivers and difficult crossings.

The efforts of Wellington’s map-makers are another example of the behind-the-scenes activities that contributed silently to the effectiveness of Wellington’s campaigning and in their small way helped him to his victory against the French in Portugal and Spain.