The Peninsular War

Bretwalda Battles

The Peninsular War

by

Oliver Hayes

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Published by Bretwalda Books at Smashwords

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First Published 2014

Copyright © Bretwalda Books 2014

Oliver Hayes asserts his moral rights to be regarded as the author of this work.

ISBN 978-1-909698-79-6

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Contents

Chapter 1 - The Peninsular War in Outline

Chapter 2 - The Commanders :

BRITAIN - Wellington, Acland, Alten, Anson, Anstruther, Baird, Beresford, Burrard, Colbrone, Cole, Cotton, Crauford, Dalrymple, Dickson, Fane, Graham, Hill, Leith, Lumley, Moore, Paget, Picton, Sherbrooke, Wilson.

FRANCE - Napoleon Bonaparte, Augerau, Clausel, D'Erlon, Duhesme, Dupont, Foy, Godinot, Grouchy, Harispe, Joseph, Jourdan, Junot, Lapisse, Lechi, Lefebvre Desnouettes, Marmong, Milhaud, Murat, Reille, Rey, Ruffin, Sebastiani, Soult, St Cyr, Victor, Vilatte.

SPAIN - Albuquerque, Alvarez, Blake, Bryas, Castanos, Cuesta, Daoiz, La Pena, O'Farrill, Velarde, Veengas, Von Reding.

Chapter 3 - Weapons, Soldiers and Tactics

Chapter 4 - The French Army

Chapter 5 - The Spanish Army

Chapter 6 - The British Army

Chapter 7 - The Portuguese Army

Chapter 8 - The Battles :

Madrid, Gerona, Bailen, Vimiero, Retreat to Corunna, Oporto, Talavera, Barossa, Albuera, Ciudad Rodrigo, Badajoz, Salamanca, San Sebastian, The Pyrenees, Toulouse

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Chapter 1

The Peninsular War in Outline

The Madrid Uprising was the first serious bloodshed in what was to become the Peninsular War, the struggle that wracked the Iberian Peninsula from 1808 to 1814. That war was but one part of the wider Napoleonic Wars that engulfed Europe in a series of wars and campaigns that lasted almost 20 years and stretched from the Atlantic to Moscow and reached overseas to India, the Caribbean and the Near East. But although the Peninsular War was a part of the wider conflict, it had some unique characteristics that made it a peculiarly savage and hard-fought conflict.

In the earlier stages of the Napoleonic Wars, Spain had remained neutral or actively taken the side of France against the various coalitions that sought to crush Napoleon, the self-proclaimed Emperor of the French. Spain saw the opportunity to make gains for herself, while the French had no ambitions south of the Pyrenees. The situation began to change in 1807. Napoleon stood triumphant in Europe having defeated Prussia, Austria and Russia on the battlefield and having cowed the smaller states into submission. His only remaining enemy was Britain, and there he had a problem.

In 1805 Britain's Admiral Nelson had crushed the combined fleets of France and Spain at the Battle of Trafalgar. As a result, Napoleon had no chance of invading Britain with his magnificent army. Instead he sought to bring Britain to peace talks by crippling her trade. By blocking every European port to British merchant ships, Napoleon believed, he would do so much damage to British wealth that peace on his terms would be inevitable. Not all the European countries wanted to join such a blockade, but one by one they succumbed to Napoleon's threats and bluster. By October 1807 only Portugal still refused to join this Continental System, as it was known.

In November, Napoleon agreed a treaty with the Spanish Prime Minister, Manuel de Godoy - who was also the lover of the Spanish Queen Maria Louisa. In return for French troops being allowed to march through Spain to invade Portugal, the Spanish would get the Portuguese fleet and various overseas colonies, and as an added inducement Portugal would be divided into three minor states under Spanish domination.

The Portuguese did not wait about to be destroyed. Queen Maria I fled from Lisbon on 29 November along with her family, the Portuguese fleet, most of the merchant ships and thousands of soldiers. She moved to the Portuguese colony of Brazil where she set up court along with her son and regent John. John, later King John VI, appealed to Britain for help. John left orders in Portugal that there should be no resistance to the French in order to avoid bloodshed. The royal flight was, he said, only temporary and soon all would be right.

The embarkation of the Portuguese Royal Family at Lisbon. Queen Maria and the Regent John fled in the face of overwhelming French force and headed to Brazil from where they appealed to Britain for help.

Napoleon, meanwhile, had become more ambitious. Rather than merely close the Iberian ports to British trade, he now wanted to gain complete control of the Peninsula by merging Portugal into Spain and making his own brother, Joseph, King of Spain. His moves were made slowly. First larger numbers of French soldiers marched into Spain, claiming to be on their way to Portugal to occupy that country. In February Napoleon ordered his men in Spain to seize key Spanish fortresses and military bases using the pretext that they were needed to safeguard the supply lines to the French troops in Portugal.

King Charles IV of Spain began to grow alarmed as the numbers of French troops in Spain and Portugal passed the 100,000 mark, and an ominous 80% of them were in Spain. At the same time Spain was suffering an economic crisis, caused largely by the loss of trade to the American colonies that had followed the Battle of Trafalgar. The populace and many nobles blamed Godoy for the pro-French policy that was causing such poverty and hardship. He was already unpopular, and the French troops entering Spain made him even more so.

In the spring of 1808 Charles, Maria Louisa and Godoy were staying in the small palace at the town of Aranjuez. The trio held discussions about the deteriorating situation, and decided to follow the lead of the Portuguese royal family. Messages were sent to Cadiz ordering the Spanish fleet there to prepare to carry the royal family and court to the Spanish colony of Spain. Spain at this date was at peace with Britain, so the Royal Navy would not intervene, and might even help.

The message to Cadiz became public and there were protests among the nobility and population, neither of whom wanted to be abandoned to the dubious mercies of the French. On 17 March a mob stormed the palace, looted it and hurled insults at the King and Queen - though Godoy was nowhere to be found. Soldiers moved in to restore order, but the Spanish officers made no secret of the fact that they sympathised with the rioters. Godoy's commoner mistress, one Pepita, was found but she refused to say where Godoy had gone.

The tense situation was beginning to relax when a soldier found Godoy hiding in a cupboard. The hapless Prime Minister was dragged out, kicked down a flight of stairs and manhandled to the room where the King and Queen were being held. He was thrown to the floor at bayonet point. To save Godoy's life, Charles IV sacked him on the spot and ordered him to be put in prison. The news that Godoy had been found provoked renewed rioting and a group of nobles at court persuaded Charles that the only way to save Godoy was for him to abdicate in favour of his son, Ferdinand. Many nobles opposed the move and urged Charles to take back the throne.

King Ferdinand VII of Spain came to the throne amidst civil turmoil and government bankruptcy. He subsequently played straight into Napoleon's hands and was forced to abdicate as King of Spain.

At this point Queen Maria Louisa sent a trusted servant to carry a letter to the nearest French garrison with an appeal for help. Marshal Joachim Murat was surprised to receive the note, but acted fast. On 22 March Murat and his men arrived, drove off the mob and the Spanish soldiers and took possession of Charles, Maria Louisa and Godoy. Charles promptly announced that he had been forced to abdicate, and now repudiated the move. Meanwhile, the news that Charles had abdicated had reached Madrid, where loud demonstrations in favour of the new King Ferdinand took place. Murat declared that given the confused situation, France did not recognise Ferdinand as King, but neither did it not recognise him.

Napoleon then suggested that both Charles and Ferdinand should come to Bayonne in southern France so that they could all discuss the situation in Spain and come to an amicable solution. The two rival kings arrived in April but soon found they were prisoners. The stage was set for the savage events of 2 May 1808 in Madrid.

On 5 May Napoleon forced both Charles and Ferdinand to abdicate in favour of himself. He then handed the crown to his brother, Joseph, who was reluctant to accept the honour as he had been enjoying himself living in Naples. Nevertheless Joseph bowed to his brother's wishes and set off for Madrid.

Before Joseph could get to his new kingdom, however, the war had begun. On 2 May, the local French commander, Joachim Murat, ordered the daughter and younger son of King Charles to be put in a carriage and sent to Bayonne. The pair refused to go, so Murat sent a battalion of infantry to the royal palace to enforce his instructions. As news of events spread a huge crowd of Madrid citizens began converging on the palace. In circumstances that remain unclear the French soldiers opened fire on the crowd. The Spanish rose in revolt, using whatever knives, axes or guns came to hand. Some units of the Spanish Army in Madrid joined the fighting that raged through the streets of Madrid like wildfire.

Murat sent in reinforcements, including the feared Mameluke cavalry, and by nightfall had restored order. Around 150 Frenchmen and several hundred Spaniards were dead. Next day, Murat and General Grouchy set up a military court that sentenced more than 500 Spaniards to death, all of them shot by firing squads before dusk fell on 3rd May.

The Mamelukes charge into Madrid, cutting down Spanish civilians who had begun an uprising against French rule. The brutality of events in Madrid spread like wildfire and caused nearly all of Spain to erupt into anti-French violence.

As the news of events in Madrid spread, dozens of other towns rose in rebellion. French soldiers were attacked everywhere, the French ships in Cadiz were seized by the town council and entire districts came out in revolt. The situation was confused by the fact that the uprising was haphazard, unplanned and lacked any unifying authority. Both Charles and Ferdinand were being held prisoner in France, while the official arms of government were under the control of the new King Joseph. Local noblemen, town councils and bishops began acting on their own authority and organising government within their own areas. Eventually the provincial councils would form what became known as juntas, temporary governments that ruled on behalf of the absent King of Spain against the usurper Joseph. This organisation took time to form and was always vulnerable to French intervention.

Meanwhile the Spanish army was coming out in favour of the uprisings. In many areas the French armies were able to restore control in towns and cities without much trouble, the Spanish army preferring to fall back when they were outnumbered. At the Battle of El Bruc on 4 June French troops attempting to break the siege of Barcelona were halted and then thrown back by a mixed force of Spanish regulars and militia. To add insult to injury, the Spanish managed to capture a French Eagle, the prestigious standard given to French regiments by Napoleon himself.

At Saragossa the French laid siege in June and quickly breached the city walls. When the French commander, General Jean-Antoine Verdier, demanded surrender the defender Jose de Palafox y Melzi refused declaring that he was fighting war to the knife. The French attacked and surged into the city, but found themselves engaged in brutal street fighting with every man of Saragossa armed with a gun, sword, axe or knife. More than 60 days of savage house fighting followed during which the French more than once reached the centre of the city before being pushed back again. Eventually, Verdier gave up and marched away. The entire city was in ruins.

The French attack on Saragossa carried them inside the city walls, but they were then faced by a brutal battle of street fighting that ended in their defeat.

On the other hand the Battle of Cabezon saw a Spanish army trounced in Castille on 12 June while on 14 July the Battle of Media de Rioseco was an even greater French victory. A pattern was emerging with most of northern and central Spain in French hands, along with key cities and fortresses in the south, while the Spanish held most of the south and bands of militia or locals roamed the countryside seeking to ambush isolated French patrols anywhere in Spain.

Then on 14 July came the Battle of Bailen. French General Pierre Dupont managed to get his army of 20,000 men surrounded at Bailen on the banks of the Guadalquivir in southern Spain. By 19 July Dupont was short of food and ammunition and despite repeated attacks had been unable to break out. With more Spanish troops arriving to tighten the ring around him, Dupont surrendered his entire army.

The news of Bailen galvanised Spain. Army units were heartened and militias received a flood of recruits. Town councils that had been contemplating following orders from the government of King Joseph now turned to their local junta instead. Spanish armies remained outnumbered by the French, but a new factor now entered the war: The Guerilla or little war.

Throughout Spain bands of local men armed with whatever they could find by way of weapons embarked on a campaign of sustained and determined resistance to the French. These guerilleros did not wear uniforms and did not form an orderly army, instead they emerged from the local population to fight when an opportunity offered then melted back into the population afterwards. Most bands were small and drawn from rural areas, only a few being larger than a couple of dozen men and even fewer being based in urban areas. Some of the guerrilla leaders were regular army officers who had taken to the hills rather than surrender to the French.

The rise of the guerilleros was aided by the behaviour of the French troops. The supply system of the French army was never very good, and in the rugged countryside of Spain frequently broke down entirely. French troops were forced to steal food from the locals, who then went hungry. Looting of things other than food was frequent, while rapes and murders were not unknown. These early outrages by the French spurred the guerrillas to reprisals, not only refusing to take prisoners but frequently torturing any Frenchmen they could get hold of. The French responded in kind so that large swathes of the Spanish countryside became abandoned by all except the dead.

A contemporary illustration by Spanish artist Francisco Goya shows an attack by guerrilleros on French troops. Goya emphasises the brutal nature of the little war in this sketch, part of his Disasters of War series.

It was a savage war with high casualty rates, the guerrillas killing far more French soldiers than did the regular Spanish army. The guerrilla war had a wider impact on the French army than mere casualties. Because small French patrols were likely to be ambushed, the French could not move except in large numbers. In some areas a messenger would not get through unless escorted by at least 300 men. That meant not only that the French generals were often ignorant of what each other were doing, it also restricted the French to main roads where they could move in safety. The more rural areas gradually became off limits to the French, allowing Spanish forces to move unseen across Spain.

Meanwhile, the appeal of Portugal's regent John to Britain had not gone unheeded. By 1808 the British controlled the world's oceans and had captured nearly every French colony. British armies had fought on the continent of Europe, but most in small numbers and without much success. The British government had been looking for a way to hurt France further. One idea was to land a substantial army somewhere in Europe to stir up trouble. None of the former enemies of Napoleon wanted to re-open a war they had already lost, so the appeal from Portugal was most welcome. Preparations were already in hand when the news of the Spanish uprising of 2nd May arrived. The army was enlarged and hurried along.

Clearly the expedition to the Iberian Peninsula was going to be important, and with the need to co-operate with the Portuguese and Spanish there would be a need for diplomacy as well as fighting. Command of the British army was given to General Sir Hew Dalrymple, an experienced commander who the government trusted to act with tact and understanding with regard to his allies. The second in command was Sir Arthur Wellesley, today better known by his later title of Duke of Wellington. Wellesley was at this date regarded as something of a fire-eater with a reputation for aggressive action and skilful manoeuvring. Since most of his victories had been gained in India, however, the British government knew little of him personally and hesitated to give him complete command of such an important mission. It was hoped that Wellesley would do the fighting, and Dalrymple the diplomacy.

Wellesley arrived in Portugal at Figuera in August and within days drove off a French attack made by General Henri Delaborde at the Battle of Rolica. Four days later on 21 August he similarly defeated a much larger assault by General Jean-Androche Junot at the Battle of Vimeiro. Meanwhile, the rejuvenated Portuguese Army had mobilised and was laying siege to the French garrison in Lisbon. Dalrymple then arrived and agreed with Junot the Convention of Cintra. This forced the French to surrender Lisbon, but not only allowed the entire French army to leave unmolested but provided for the British Royal Navy to take the French back to France. The Spanish were furious, as was the British government. Dalrymple and Wellesley were recalled in disgrace to explain themselves, leaving Sir John Moore in command of the British expeditionary force.

The Royal Navy had, meanwhile, being doing rather more productive work. The best 10,000 men in the Spanish army had marched to Denmark in 1807 as allies of France to be ready to help Napoleon. With the outbreak of war in Spain, this Spanish La Romana Division, named for its commander the Marquis de la Romana, naturally wanted to go home. La Romana managed to open secret links to the British and persuaded them to sent a fleet of ships to take him and his men off the Danish coast. At the last minute the plans were betrayed by a pro-French Spanish officer, General Kindelan. Romana seized the island of Langeland and held out for three weeks before the British ships arrived on 21 August. In all nearly 9,000 first class troops were taken away and transported back to Spain.

Just as important was the fact that Romana returned to Spain. Not only was he a talented commander, he was also a highly respected nobleman with extensive contacts among the Spanish governing classes. He would go on to win a string of minor victories that would liberate the Asturias from the French by 1810. He died suddenly of a seizure in January 1811.

La Romana was not the only new arrival in Spain in October 1808. Marching over the Pyrenees with massive reinforcements of veteran troops came Napoleon himself. By the start of November he had 278,000 men concentrated on the Ebro.

Napoleon's intervention came at a bad time for the Spanish, and for Sir John Moore. Lacking the firm hand of a centralised royal authority, the juntas had begun squabbling with each other. The situation was exacerbated by the economic crisis that had brought financial hardship to Spain for some years. While the people were enthusiastic for the war against France, the juntas lacked the money to pay for arms, ammunition and food to support armies and guerrillas in the field. Many of the disputes between juntas and local councils were related to money or to food. Moreover many of those who had joined the fighting against the French were themselves short of money and drifted away to return to work or to their farms. The Spanish war effort was slowly falling apart.

Napoleon struck in the second week of November. He launched a massive double-envelopment attack with his fast-marching armies advancing on either flank of the 80,000 Spanish soldier drawn up against him. At the Battle of Tudela on 23 November the Spanish right wing was crushed. A week later the Spanish centre gave way at the Battle of Somosierra. At the Battle of Espinosa on 11 November the Spanish commander Joaquin Blake managed to hold off the French just long enough for much of his army to get away intact to the northern hills. The Spanish field army had ceased to exist as a fighting force, the road to Madrid was open.

Napoleon's army reached the Spanish capital on 4 December. The city authorities surrendered promptly and accepted Joseph as King of Spain. Napoleon set about the business of reducing resistance across Spain. General St Cyr was sent into Catalonia and at the Battle of Cardadeu and Battle of Molins de Rey crushed the local Spanish forces under Conde de Caldagues. Other French columns fanned out to destroy resistance and install officials loyal to King Joseph.

The envoys from Madrid arrive at Napoleon's tent to surrender the Spanish capital to him. The city is shown in the background in flames, though in fact the defence was only token and the surrender came after the French had fired only a few cannon shots at the defences.

Meanwhile, Sir John Moore and his 23,000 British troops had been hurrying up from Portugal to aid the Spanish. He had got as far as Salamanca by 3 December when he heard of the massive French advance and the Spanish defeats. Moore at once began laying plans for a retreat to the port of Corunna, but before he went fought a sharp action at the Battle of Sahagun, which drove off the French cavalry scouts trying to find him.

As Moore began his epic Retreat to Corunna, La Romana and Blake came up to help hold back the French. They were hugely outnumbered by Napoleon and heavily defeated at the Battle of Mansilla, though the Spanish again managed to get much of their army away intact. Moore was now on his own. After a nightmare journey over the mountains in winter with a total lack of supply, Moore and his men reached Corunna. He fought the rearguard Battle of Corunna to buy time for his army to be evacuated by the Royal Navy, but was himself killed even as he drove off the French. After Corunna fell, his grave was found by the French Marshal Jean Soult who ordered and paid for a grand stone monument to be erected in place of the small cross hastily left by the retreating British.

With every Spanish field army defeated and the British driven into the sea, Napoleon returned to France, taking with him most of his victorious army. He left behind him Marshal Nichel Ney and Marshal Claude Victor with orders to complete the pacification of Spain and Marshal Soult who was ordered to invade Portugal to crush the Portuguese Army that had been left behind when Moore advanced toward Madrid.

Unknown to Napoleon, however, the British were not yet finished. A new British government headed by Spencer Perceval had decided that the defeat of Napoleon's France was the paramount objective of the British state. Huge amounts of money were spent on sending arms and ammunition to both the Portuguese and Spanish armies, with more weaponry going to the guerrilleros. Not only that but a new army of 20,000 British soldiers was sent to Lisbon under the command of Sir Arthur Wellesley, recently exonerated from blame for the disastrous Convention of Cintra.

Once in Portugal, Wellesley moved fast. He quickly established excellent co-operation with the Portuguese Army, then marched north. His forces met the advance units of Soult's invasion force at the Battle of Grijo on 10 May and threw them back. Two days later he crossed the River Douro and defeated Soult's main body in the Battle of Oporto. Leaving the pursuit of Soult to the Portuguese Army under Francisco Silveira, Count of Amarante, Wellesley turned back south.

On 7 June the Spanish General Pablo Morillo had defeated Marshal Ney at the Battle of Puente Sanpayo. Ney had pulled out of Galicia entirely, joining Soult on a retreat out of northwestern Spain. This good news for Wellington was followed by even better news from Extramadura. The elderly Spanish general Gregorio de la Cuesta had called out the militia of Extramadura, stiffened them with a small number of veteran regulars and attacked the local French garrisons. Among the places he captured was the key border fortress city of Badajoz which controlled one of the two main roads from Portugal to central Spain. With that in the hands of his ally, Wellesley knew, the road to central Spain was open before him.

French Marshal Victor was aware of the danger and moved quickly. Before Wellesley could get to the scene, Victor had defeated Cuesta at the Battle of Medellin. Cuesta lost all but ten of his cannon and half his army were killed, wounded or captured, but he remained in the field and set about gathering new forces. By mid-July he had some 33,000 men under arms and met with Wellesley's army of 20,000 British for an advance up the Tagus Valley. The resulting Talavera campaign ended with a tactical victory for the British when they drove off combined assaults from three French forces. However a lack of food supplies and disputes with his Spanish allies forced Wellesley to fall back into Portugal.

Wellington learned his lessons from the debacle of the Talavera campaign, and from his victory on the field itself. Never again would he rely on Spanish promises of help. He began a thorough reform of his supply system, writing constantly to the government demanding more and better food together with more and better transport. Eventually he established a system of fortified depots across Portugal, and later Spain. Into these depots were poured huge quantities of food, clothing, ammunition and anything else the British soldiers might need. Wherever Wellesley took his men he was always close to a depot on which he could draw for supplies. It was a system that was to keep his army fit, well fed and fully equipped all the way to France.

Meanwhile, Wellesley and the British army fell back into Portugal. The foray into Spain had been a failure.

Wellesley was now determined to secure his supply lines, and that meant above all removing any chance that the French might take Lisbon. In November 1809 he gave his chief engineer Sir Richard Fletcher orders to construct a network of defences across the Lisbon peninsular that would be impregnable. The resulting Lines of Torres Vedras, named after the Portuguese town at their centre, were completed ten months later.

Meanwhile the French had been busy in Spain driving Spanish armies away from areas of strategic importance, securing their grip on southern Spain and conducting anti-guerrillera campaigns. By May Marshal Massena felt his rear was secure enough for him to invade Portugal. He began by ordering Ney to take the key border fortresses of Ciudad Rodrigo and Almeira from their Spanish and Portuguese garrisons respectively. This was achieved by July and Massena marched into Portugal.

At the Battle of Bussaco, the French were delayed by a rearguard action fought by Wellesley. The French then took another road, and the British fell back to the Lines of Torres Vedras. Massena had heard rumours that the British had been building a fort north of Lisbon, was taken entirely by surprise by how extensive and strong the works were. From October to April Massena and his army sat in front of the fortifications and although a few skirmishes were fought he made no impact on the defences.

One of the forts of the Lines of Torres Vedras as it is today. The massive defences involved not only forts, bastions and redoubts but the damming of rivers to create swamps, the carving away of hillsides to create cliffs and a host of other works.

On 5 March the French tried to capture Cadiz, a campaign that ended in defeat at the Battle of Barrosa, and in May Wellesley sallied out from Torres Vedras to defeat Massena at Fuentes de Onoro. Later that year a British-Portuguese army won the battle of Albuera, while Spanish armies reformed and enjoyed a number of small victories. Large reinforcements reached Wellingston as Wellesley now was, and the British planned a major offensive for 1812.

That year opened with Wellington laying siege to and capturing the key frontier fortresses of Badajoz and Ciudad Rodrigo. He then marched into Spain and won a significant victory at the Battle of Salamanca. Renewed efforts by Spanish armies in the south allowed them to drive out of Andalusia and Asturias the weakened French garrisons. Wellington then entered Madrid before pushing on to Burgos, but he failed to take the town and had to fall back before new French concentrations.

In the wake of his disastrous 1812 invasion of Russia, Napoleon removed men from Spain to shore up his eastern defences. This allowed Wellington once again to march into central Spain. This time he used his British-Portuguese forces to crush the joint French armies at Vitoria, causing King Joseph to abdicate and the French to evacuate most of Spain, chased out by the rejuvenated Spanish army. Wellington captured Santander and made this large port his new supply base, abandoning Lisbon. He also took San Sebastian and so cleared the approaches to the Pyrenees.

British infantry advance at the Battle of Vitoria. This victory for Wellington secured the entire Iberian Peninsula and drove the French back over the Pyrenees into France.

Through the winter of 1813 to 1814 there were a series of Battles of the Pyrenees, with the French making repeated but ultimately futile efforts to break back into Spain. In the spring of 1814 Wellington invaded southern France, fighting a series of actions that culminated at Toulouse. The last action was fought on 14 April at Bayonne. Napoleon had abdicated as Emperor of the French on 11 April, but news did not reach the south until after the battle at Bayonne. When the news did arrive, Wellington called an immediate halt to all operations, though he ordered key fortresses, bridges and other points to be garrisoned by his British troops.

The Peninsular War was over.

The Waterloo Campaign was yet to come.

Napoleon signs his abdication on 4 April 1814 watched by his marshals and generals. The abdication marked the end of the Peninsular War.

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Chapter 2

The Commanders

BRITAIN

Wellington

Sir Arthur Wellesley who commanded the British forces in the Peninsula is today much better known by his later title of the Duke of Wellington. As Wellington, he went on to become one of Britain's most famous and highly regarded military commanders and in the years after his great victory at the Battle of Waterloo was widely considered to be the greatest living military genius. But when the Peninsular War started he was considered by his peers to be merely an adequate commander with no special talents and little real experience.

Arthur Wellesley

Wellesley was born in 1769 as the fourth son of the Earl of Mornington, a not particularly wealthy Irish nobleman. Wellesley was famously bad at school, though he excelled at horsemanship, swordsmanship and foreign languages. His mother said of him when he was a teenager, Poor Arthur, he is fit for nothing but cannon fodder. And so he joined the army in 1787. His family was never rich, but they had enough money and connections to get him promoted to the rank of captain in 1791, as soon as he had completed the statutory three years as a lieutenant.

At this date it was possible for rich men to purchase promotions in the army, and some positions were reserved for those with the money to buy them. Poorer officers had to rely on catching the eye of a senior general or on excelling on the battlefield. Wellesley was luck in that his eldest brother, who by this date had inherited the family title of Earl of Mornington, was highly active in politics. Mornington wanted his brothers to be useful to him, and Arthur's allotted role was to be an army officer. Mornington and his polticial allies therefore purchased promotions that would normally have been beyond the reach of Wellesley. By 1793 he was the commander of the 33rd Regiment of Foot and in a position to make or break his own career by his own actions.

In 1794 the 33rd joined the abortive campaign to the Low Countries. Although the campaign overall was a failure, Wellesley acquitted himself well. Two years later he and his regiment were sent to India, where he was to gain much fame. Soon after he reached India, his elder brother arrived as the Governor General of British possessions in India. In 1796 war broke out with Tipu Sultan, the ruler of Mysore. Wellesley and his regiment fought under General Sir David Baird and enjoyed mixed fortunes. They fought well at the Battle of Mallevelly, but then made a mess of a night attack at Seringapatem. After Mysore was defeated, he commanded the British garrison in the city with the task of ensuring the new ruler did as he was advised by the British.

In 1803 war broke out between the British and the Marathas. Wellesley, now a Major General, commanded the British invasion force. He caught the main Maratha army in a river bend at Assaye and attacked at once. The resulting battle was hard fought and involved the British having to undertake some complicated manoeuvres with careful timing. Wellesley later maintained that Assaye was the battle of which he was most proud. It was also the battle at which he came closest to being killed. He had two horses shot under him and on the second occasion was almost killed by enemy cavalry who milled around him until other British soldiers drove them off. After Assaye, Wellesley fought the Marathas twice more - at Argaum and Gawilghur - defeating them again and forcing them to agree to a peace treaty.

It was in India that Wellesley learned the lessons that would stand him in such good stead in the Peninsular. Throughout his Indian wars he commanded a British army that was co-operating with local allies who often had quite different objectives and opinions to his own. He also learned that armies cannot fight unless they are well supplied with arms, ammunition, food, boots, clothes and all the other paraphernalia of war. His use of intelligence and spies in India proved to be superb, using not only paid agents but disaffected enemy soldiers and citizens to good effect. He would repeat this process in the Peninsular War. He later said All the business of war, and indeed all the business of life, is to endeavour to find out what you don't know by what you do; that's what I called 'guess what was at the other side of the hill'.

But perhaps the most important lesson that Wellesley learned in India was that in war things go wrong, plans go awry and a commander must always be vigilant and ready to change his plans. He once said that French strategy was like fine horse harness made of the finest leather, while his was like one made of rope. The French plan was beautiful to look at but would shrivel up if anything snapped, whereas his was ugly and makeshift, but that if anything broke he merely had to tie a quick knot for all to be well again.

Wellesley returned to Britain in 1805 with a knighthood and a considerable fortune. In 1805 he took part in an expedition to the Elbe that proved to be as dismal a failure as the campaign in the Low Countries eleven years earlier. He then took leave from the army and was elected to Parliament, largely to further the interests of his brother who was seeking a senior ministerial post. Parliament was not to his liking, so he returned to the army and in 1806 was among the troops besieging Copenhagen. He commanded an infantry brigade there and did so well that he was promoted to Lieutenant General.

In 1808 he was chosen to be the second in command of the British army heading for Portugal to aid that kingdom fight the French. He won the battles of Rolica and Vimeiro before his senior