Wellington’s Engineers: Military Engineering on the Peninsular War 1808-1814 (4 page)

• Trying to obtain maps and plans from the Portuguese archives before the French removed them.

• Ordering plans to be made of the defences at Lisbon and St Julian to the south of Lisbon, St Julian being a possible point of embarkation.

• John Burgoyne ordered to Almeida and Ciudad Rodrigo to report on the defences.

• John Squire assigned to General Hope’s division that was marching to Elvas to take control of it from the French.

• George Landmann ordered to survey Peniche as a place of defence and possibly for embarkation.

• Peter Patton being ordered to review the defences at Setuval, south of Lisbon, that was also being considered as a point of embarkation for the army.

• Edmund Mulcaster being ordered to survey the Tagus at Villa Velha and Abrantes for possible crossing-points.

In addition Moore had ordered Lieutenant Boothby RE to the Portuguese frontier fortress of Elvas with the party sent to demand the surrender of the French garrison under the terms of the Convention of Cintra. Leading this group was John Colborne who was required to make three journeys between Lisbon and Elvas. At first, the terms were challenged by the French garrison and then the Spanish refused to let the French garrison leave. Boothby took the opportunity to review the defences and look for plans whilst at the fortress.

In early October 1808, the first reports on the roads and rivers were being returned, with details of the routes from Lisbon to Almeida and Abrantes being some of the first received. This was the start of a mapping exercise that would be carried out by Staff Corps, Engineer and QMG’s staff continually to the end of the war. The targets of these surveys quickly spread with reconnaissance in the Alentejo and south of the Tagus towards Setubal.

Advance of Moore’s Force

Sir John Moore was officially confirmed as commander of the Allied forces on 7 October 1808 and immediately started considering how best to support the Spanish armies, an operation that was expected by both the British and Spanish governments. On the 8th, Fletcher reported home that orders had been issued for the advance of Sir John Moore’s army into Spain and most of the engineers would accompany it. Much to their disappointment, Captain Patton and Lieutenants Williams, Stanway and Forster were ordered to remain in Lisbon.
¹⁷
Captain Landmann also remained in Lisbon as technically he was part of the Gibraltar garrison and not attached to the army in Portugal. Landmann appeared entirely happy with this arrangement. He always seemed to find a way of not coming under the direct control of any of his seniors, a situation that he used to his advantage throughout the war.

Fletcher’s attention turned to how to move the engineer stores with the army, a task that proved nearly impossible due to the shortage of transport. He expected the Ordnance store ships would move to Corunna or Grijon and, writing home on 22 October, he reported that he could only obtain transport for entrenching tools for 1,000 men.
¹⁸
The Army was in a very similar position, with transport only for the most basic supplies.

Moore’s army started its advance from Lisbon on 18 October although the General did not leave Lisbon until the 27th. Fletcher left Lisbon on the 26th, although other engineers were already moving ahead of the army surveying the various routes, e.g. on 1 November, Lieutenant Wells wrote a report on the road from Almaraz to Salamanca.
¹⁹
On the same day Fletcher reported that the army was moving to Abrantes and the route from there would depend on the reports that were coming in. However, one important decision had been made, based on inaccurate information on the state of the roads. Burrard had come to the conclusion that the artillery could not follow the route of the army to Ciudad Rodrigo through Coimbra and Almeida and planned to send the artillery via Elvas. Moore came to the same conclusion and made the dangerous decision to split his forces. He sent his artillery protected by Hope’s division, by the main road through Elvas to Almaraz and then north.
²⁰
This led to several days’ delay at Salamanca whilst Moore waited for his forces to concentrate. If time had not been so critical and Moore could have justified delaying his advance for a couple of weeks, he would have been in possession of accurate reports on the roads and he would have had more confidence that the artillery could have moved with the army via Coimbra and Ciudad Rodrigo. Having said that, the early surveys by engineer officers warned of the difficulties of moving artillery over the route. John Burgoyne described the roads in the first part of the journey from Lisbon to Coimbra as ‘good’ and ‘frequently extremely fine’. He then reported that they deteriorated:

from Coimbra [towards Almeida] the road is very bad, steep and narrow, and in its present state not practicable for artillery, the country carts do pass it, but with much difficulty that they can scarcely get from Coimbra over the mountains 10 miles in a whole day; from the foot of the mountains the road is bad but passable for carriages.
²¹

Fletcher also noted that the few light guns travelling with General Hill ‘will find many difficulties as the roads are said to be almost impassable for carriages of any description’.
²²
Whilst it may have been possible to move the artillery by the more northerly route, with winter approaching and an inexperienced army and commissariat the decision to send the artillery by the best road may have been the correct one.

Moore arrived in Salamanca on 13 November with Fletcher arriving on the 15th. Moore now waited for his forces to concentrate, most of his infantry arriving by the 23rd, but his artillery did not arrive until early December. He was also waiting for a further 16,000 troops under Sir David Baird which had arrived at Corunna on 13 October but could not get permission to land until the local Junta had received approval from Madrid. Baird finally concentrated his troops at Astorga by 22 November, but by then Moore had decided to retreat and Baird was instructed to head for Vigo to re-embark.

Fletcher, whilst stationed at Salamanca, continued to receive reports from engineer officers on the state of the various roads. This extract from one of Fletcher’s reports indicates the type of activity underway:

I have now sent Captain Burgoyne and Lieutenant Meineke, to reconnoitre the province of Avila, its roads, rivers, bridges etc and Lieutenant Boteler is gone from hence to Zamora, and … will proceed up the Douro as far as he can with safety, to examine that river and the roads leading to and from it. Lieut. Wells arrived this morning, from Elvas, by way of Badajoz, Merida, Truxillo, Almaraz and Plasencia, and he is going on towards Madrid, to meet the head of Lieut.-Gen Hope’s column, and report on the country he has passed through.
²³

When he arrived at Avila, Burgoyne heard that General Hope with the cavalry and artillery were at Madrid and, taking the initiative, rode overnight, arriving on 21 November. Burgoyne then worked with Hope’s Quarter Master-General, De Lancey, to plan the route for the artillery over the Guadarrama mountains and on towards Salamanca.
²⁴
Lieutenant Meineke, who travelled with Burgoyne, wrote two detailed reports on the route for Fletcher. Whilst Fletcher makes no reference to receiving direct orders from Moore, he was building a detailed picture of the operational environment whether it was ordered or not. Officers had realised very quickly that most of the maps had serious errors. The engineer John Squire remarked:

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.
²⁵

The activities of the engineer officers over the last three months now meant that the British had detailed descriptions of the area around Lisbon and the three main routes from Lisbon to Elvas, Castello Branco and Coimbra and the routes into Spain via Badajoz to Madrid and Ciudad Rodrigo to Salamanca. There were also reports of the condition of the four border fortresses. We will leave Moore at this time and look at what had been happening in the north of Spain.

Military Liaison in the North of Spain between the British and Spanish

Whilst the main engineering activity was concentrated around the British army in Portugal, a completely separate activity was underway further north. Following the Spanish risings against the French occupation in mid-1808, a number of emissaries had been sent to London to request support from the British government. In the absence of a central Spanish government, which was not formed until late September 1808, in June the British government ordered out a number of military agents ‘acquainted with the Spanish Language’
²⁶
to liaise with the Spanish provinces and report on the situation.
²⁷
These officers initially arrived in the northern provinces of Asturias and Galicia and then, with more enthusiasm than good sense, encouraged the Spanish into uncoordinated actions against the French with vague promises of British help. They also wrote a stream of misleading reports to the British government, which rapidly regretted these appointments. On 29 August, Canning (Foreign Secretary) wrote to Castlereagh (Secretary of State for War and the Colonies) expressing horror at what Colonel Doyle was promising the Spanish authorities:

Nothing can be more unlucky than the orders which Colonel Doyle has given [to prepare accommodation at Corunna in expectation of the arrival of a British force] … as it appears to excite expectations which will be disappointed, and the disappointment of which may lead to disasters of great extent.
²⁸

Realising that the situation in northern Spain needed better control, Generals Leith and Broderick were dispatched in August to Santander and Corunna respectively. Four officers from the Royal Engineers were also appointed under the command of General Leith. These were Captains Charles Lefebure, John Francis Birch, Charles William Pasley and John Thomas Jones. General Leith set out on 17 August, arriving in Santander on the 23rd. Castlereagh’s detailed instructions to Leith were delivered by Lefebure when he and John Jones joined him at Oviedo: ‘This letter will be delivered to you by Captain Lefebure whose talents as an engineer will be of much use in accelerating the survey of the military line of the Asturias and the principality of Santander.’
²⁹

The engineers’ orders were to carry out surveys of the northern provinces and report on the state of the Spanish forces. This seems like the same brief that was originally given to the first group of military agents who were now running almost out of control. The main difference was that the engineer officers were clearly under military control.

Leith-Hay, in his
Narrative of the Peninsular War
,
³⁰
responded to what he felt was unjustified criticism by Napier describing the engineer officers as follows: ‘That, in point of zeal, intelligence, military knowledge, or sound judgement, four more distinguished persons could not have been selected from any army … these officers were active and zealous, constantly moving from one point to another.’ Leith-Hay, who was present as ADC to General Leith, went on to remark that finding suitably-qualified persons in the British Army at this time would have been difficult due to the state of practical knowledge (or more precisely, the lack of practical knowledge).
³¹
Leith-Hay’s defence of the engineer officers was unnecessary, as Napier’s criticism was almost certainly directed at the originally appointed military agents Doyle, Dyer, Roche, Whittingham and Patrick.

Pasley, who was waiting to sail with Sir David Baird’s force, received orders directly from Castlereagh on 30 August to proceed to Gijon ‘on a particular service’ and set off immediately for Portsmouth, reporting two days later that the fleet was ready to sail as soon as the ‘dollars’ arrived.
³²
The dollars were of course the funds that the British government were sending out to support the Spanish revolt. Pasley joined General Leith at Oviedo on 11 September.
³³

Through the early part of September the engineer officers, Lefebure, Jones and Pasley, stayed close to General Leith as he moved between Oviedo, Gijon and Santander.
³⁴
On 20 September, the Spanish under Blake pushed the French out of Bilbao and Lefebure and Jones moved into the town to liaise with the local authorities. At the same time, Pasley was ordered to carry out a survey of the Asturian mountains and Birch was ordered to join the Spanish Army of the Centre under Castaños to report on his intentions and the condition of his army. The French, stung into activity by the advance of the Spanish, regrouped and started closing in on Bilbao. On 26 September, Lefebure and Jones carried out a forward reconnaissance
³⁵
and found the French under Marshal Ney advancing on the town, necessitating a rapid withdrawal by the Spanish and the loss of Jones’ baggage.

General Leith, who was present when the French marched back into Bilbao, then went inland to Frias, accompanied by Jones, where he expected to find General Blake. He eventually found him at Lastras de la Torre and having discussed the situation with him, Leith, returned to Santander. Leith-Hay, who was with General Leith, expressed surprise at the lack of knowledge Blake had of the location and movements of the French.
³⁶
Meanwhile Pasley had returned from his survey of the Asturian mountains on 30 September, writing a detailed report for General Leith and also later copying it to General Sir David Baird.
³⁷

There was now a lull in Spanish activity as their generals and juntas discussed the next steps. Agreements had been made to form three armies: the Army of the Left under Blake around Bilbao and Valmaseda; the Army of the Centre under Pignatelli around Logrono; and the Army of the Right under Castaños between Logrono and Tudela. Another force, mainly levies under Palafox, were around Zaragossa.
³⁸
Lefebure wrote an update for the Board of Ordnance on 7 September: