All the King’s Men, page 43
But victory at Vimeiro was not followed by a vigorous pursuit, and those British troops who had not fought in the battle were the most disappointed. Among them was James Hale, a former militiaman from Gloucestershire, who had joined the 9th Foot a year earlier. He recalled:
Just in the midst of our glory, we were ordered to halt, and were not permitted to advance any more that day, which caused great murmuring among the army, in particular in such regiments as had not been engaged, for every soldier seemed anxious to push on as we could plainly see that a great part of the French army would have been our prisoners … had we been permitted to continue the advance … As Sir Arthur Wellesley was riding up and down in front of our brigade, the men loudly called out to him from one end of the line to the other, saying, ‘Let us advance! Let us advance! The enemy is in great confusion!’, but his answer was ‘I have nothing to do with it: I have no command.’45
As ever, the wounded suffered most. One British surgeon witnessed a ‘most distressing’ scene at a small farmhouse in the battlefield. ‘Around the building,’ he recorded, ‘whose interior was crowded with the wounded’,
lay a number of poor fellows in the greatest agony, not only from the anguish of their wounds, many of which were deplorable, but from the intense heat of the sun, which increased the parching fever induced by pain and loss of blood. Two fig trees afforded the scanty blessing of a sort of shade to the few who were huddled together beneath their almost leafless branches. Over the surrounding field lay scattered the fragments of arms and military equipment of every description – caps, muskets, swords, bayonets, belts and cartouche boxes covered the ground, on which were also stretched in many an awful group, the friend and foe, the dying and the dead.46
Next day Wellesley was supervising the evacuation of the wounded from the beach when Sir Hew Dalrymple arrived from Gibraltar to take command. Again Wellesley pressed for an ‘immediate advance’, but Dalrymple would not agree until he had first spoken with Burrard. At the meeting, to which Wellesley was belatedly invited, Burrard stressed the logistical difficulties of an advance. But no firm decision had been taken by 2 p.m. when Junot’s deputy, General François Étienne de Kellermann, appeared under a flag of truce. He had come to offer an armistice.47
Convinced his long-term prospects were hopeless, Junot was keen to negotiate an evacuation of French troops from Portugal. All three British generals were happy to do so, not least because, in Wellesley’s calculation, the opportunity to destroy Junot’s army had gone. So they first discussed terms amongst themselves, and then with Kellermann. Dalrymple later claimed that Wellesley bore ‘the prominent part in this discussion’.48 Wellesley denied this, claiming he had criticized the proposed armistice terms that were then drafted by Dalrymple and Kellermann alone. What is not in doubt, however, is that Wellesley alone signed the document. He did so at Kellermann’s request – the justification being that they were both of corresponding rank – and later excused himself on the grounds that he agreed with its terms in principle, if not in detail, and did not want to contradict the wishes of his superior officer. It was a decision he would soon regret.49
The formal treaty, the Convention of Cintra, was ratified on 31 August. It stated that all French troops in Portugal would be shipped home by the Royal Navy, and would take with them ‘their arms and baggage, with their personal property of every kind’ (which, in practice, meant booty that included a Bible from the royal library and two carriages belonging to the Duke of Sussex). Moreover the Russian naval squadron at Lisbon could sail away unmolested, and no reprisals would be taken against those Portuguese who had collaborated with the French. It was, in essence, a treaty that seemed to favour a beaten army, and when its terms were published in the London Gazette on 16 September they provoked an outcry. Viscount Sidmouth (formerly Henry Addington), who had himself come to terms with the French in 1802, felt ‘every heart must sicken at this break-down of the country’s honour.’ Wordsworth agreed, proclaiming in a sonnet that ‘selfish interest’ had led a brave army astray; while Byron devoted no fewer than three stanzas of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage to the ‘shame’ of Cintra.50 Portland, the prime minister, thought the terms so disadvantageous that it was hard to believe any English officer ‘could have sanctioned them’.51
Even Wellesley, sensing too late the public’s anger, tried to deny responsibility in a letter to Castlereagh. He insisted that the treaty had been negotiated not by him but by Dalrymple; and, though he agreed in principle with the evacuation, he regarded the terms as too generous. This was, in essence, the truth. Yet if Wellesley really had objected to the terms as much as he later claimed, he should have made his feelings known more forcefully at the time. He did not, claimed his biographer Elizabeth Longford, because he was eager to please and had been since childhood. ‘It was a weakness of character, perhaps,’ wrote Longford, ‘though an endearing one.’52
For a time, not surprisingly, Wellesley was tarred with the same brush as Dalrymple and Burrard. He returned home in early October to defend himself from attacks in Parliament and the press – by, among others, the former soldier William Cobbett* – and was soon followed by his superiors, both of whom were recalled by government. The subsequent Board of Inquiry, headed by seven generals, was convened in the Royal Hospital at Chelsea on 14 November. Having examined a mass of written and verbal evidence, the board approved the Convention by six votes to one, and its terms by four to three. It was by no means a ringing endorsement of the decisions taken by the three generals, though Wellesley was congratulated for operations that were ‘highly honourable and successful’, and no blame was attached to him for not following up his victory at Vimeiro. He had just about escaped with his reputation intact. Dalrymple and Burrard were not so fortunate, and would never again command troops in the field.
In Portugal, meanwhile, Lieutenant-General Sir John Moore had taken command of the enlarged British field army of 30,000 troops. With the country now free of French troops, the British government ordered him to cooperate with the Spanish rebels, who had recently inflicted upon Napoleon’s armies a string of defeats. The most demoralizing was at Bailén, near the foot of the Sierra Morena in southern Spain, where General Dupont’s corps of 17,500 inexperienced men was forced to surrender to the junta forces under General Castaños on 22 July. The terms were similar to Cintra in that they allowed for Dupont’s men to be shipped back to France. But the junta shamelessly reneged on the agreement – saying there was no need to play by the rules of war when dealing with a ‘captain of bandits’ – and instead sent the prisoners to the desolate Isla de Cabrera, south of Mallorca, where 10,000 of them perished.53
The Spanish, to be fair, had good reason to resent Dupont’s men: Córdoba had been sacked only a few weeks before Bailén. Already the war was assuming the savage nature for which it would become infamous, with mass executions, rapes, and deaths by mutilation, crucifixion, being boiled in oil and buried alive. Yet, in the autumn of 1808 at least, the war was in the balance, and the British government hoped that Moore’s arrival in Spain would tip it decisively against Napoleon.
In late October 1808, leaving 10,000 men to garrison Portugal, Moore set off from Lisbon with an army of 20,000. His intention was to rendezvous at Valladolid in Spain with Lieutenant-General Sir David Baird, who was bringing another 10,000 men from Britain, and a separate column of artillery and cavalry under Lieutenant-General the Honourable John Hope. He had also been promised additional Spanish support of 60,000–70,000 men. But, having reached Salamanca on 13 November, Moore learned that Napoleon himself had entered Spain with seven corps (160,000 men) and forced two Spanish armies to retreat. Moore soon realized that no Spanish help would be forthcoming, and on 28 November took the decision to withdraw to Lisbon, ordering Hope to join him and Baird, who was still 100 miles to the north, to fall back independently to Corunna. ‘I conceive the British troops were sent in aid of the Spanish armies,’ he wrote by way of explanation to Lord Castlereagh, ‘but not singly to resist France, if the Spaniards made no efforts.’54
Within a week, responding to a plea from the Spaniards to help them protect Madrid, Moore had changed his mind. He decided to strike east against the French line of communication and ordered Baird to join him. Even when he discovered that he was too late, and that Madrid had fallen to Napoleon on 4 December, he chose to attack a detached French corps that was operating in northern Spain under Marshal Nicolas Soult. He duly crossed the River Douro on the 15th and linked up with Baird on the 20th. A day later his cavalry, under Lieutenant-General Lord Paget (later the second Earl of Uxbridge), brilliantly defeated a brigade of Soult’s horsemen at Sahagún. But before he could engage Soult’s main force he received word that the French emperor had left Madrid and was marching towards his rear. It was a classic Napoleonic manoeuvre that, but for the Sierra de Guadarrama lying between them, might have succeeded. The two days that Napoleon lost in the mountains, however, meant a forewarned Moore was able to reach Astorga first on 30 December. Already discipline in Moore’s army was breaking down as his men – bitterly disappointed that they had not come to grips with the French, and forced to slog through mud-filled roads – were taking out their frustrations on the locals in an orgy of pillage, rape and murder. Moore responded with a General Order of 27 December, chastising his men for their ‘extreme bad conduct’ at a time when ‘they are about to enter into contact with the Enemy, and when the greatest regularity and the best conduct are most requisite’. He added:
The Spanish Forces have been overpower’d and until such time as they are reassembled and ready again to come forward the situation of this Army must be arduous – and such as to call for the exertion of qualities, the most rare and valuable in a military Body. These are not bravery alone, but patience and constancy under fatigue & Hardship – obedience to command, Sobriety and orderly conduct, firmness and resolution in every difficult situation in which they may be placed: it is by the display of such qualities alone that the Army can expect to deserve the name of Soldiers – that they may be able to withstand the Forces opposed to them, or to fulfil the expectation of their Country.55
With no hope of reaching Lisbon, Moore’s only option was to withdraw 200 miles north-east to the ports of Corunna and Vigo, through mountainous terrain and in the depth of winter. In a journal entry for 24 December, he foresaw the rigours of the march in ‘a country without fuel [where] it is impossible to bivouac; the villages are small, which obliges us to march thus by corps in succession. Our retreat, therefore, becomes much more difficult.’56 Napoleon, meanwhile, saw little to be gained from a chase he assumed would be futile, and gave command of the pursuing force to Soult and Ney.
Less two brigades that were sent due west to Vigo, Moore’s army left Astorga for Corunna on 1 January 1808. Private Thomas Pococke of the 71st Highlanders recorded the horrors of marching that day through a 9-mile snow-clogged mountain pass:
The silence was only interrupted by the groans of the men, who, unable to proceed farther, laid themselves down in despair to perish in the snow, and where the report of a pistol told the death of a horse, which had fallen down, unable to proceed. I felt an unusual listlessness steal over me. Many times have I said, ‘These men who have resigned themselves to their fate are happier than I. What have I to struggle for? Welcome death! Happy deliverer!’ These thoughts passed in my mind involuntarily … The rain poured in torrents; the melted snow was half knee-deep in places, and stained by the blood that flowed from our wounded and bruised feet. To add to our misery, we were forced by turns to drag the baggage. This was more than human nature could sustain. Many wagons were abandoned and much ammunition destroyed.57
At Villafranca, which the army reached that night, there was more indiscipline, as British soldiers fought Spanish troops for the precious resource of firewood. ‘They said one to the other, “Kill him”, and began to push me about,’ recalled Corporal Benjamin Miller of the Royal Artillery. ‘One of them luckily pushed me against the stairs. I immediately ran up,
and told the four men to be on their guard or we should all be killed. One placed himself behind the door and I and the other three stood with our swords drawn. In a few minutes up came three Spanish soldiers with large staves and knives. The man behind the door ran one of them through, and I cut down another and the third had three swords in on him. We left them all for dead … On our road to La Coruña we burned down a village because the people would not sell us anything.58
During the arduous march from Villafranca to Castro de Rei, Pococke of the 71st was close to giving up. He recalled:
There was nothing to sustain our famished bodies or shelter them from the rain or snow. We were either drenched with rain or crackling with ice. Fuel we could find none. The sick and wounded … were now left to perish in the snow … Donald McDonald, the hardy Highlander, began to fail. He, as well as myself, had long been barefooted and lame; he that had encouraged me to proceed, now himself lay down to die. For two days he had been almost blind, and unable, from a severe cold, to hold up his head. We sat down together; not a word escaped our lips. We looked around, then at each other, and closed our eyes. We felt there was no hope … We had not sat half an hour, sleep was stealing upon me, when I perceived a bustle around me. It was an advanced party of the French. Unconscious of the action, I started upon my feet, levelled my musket, which I had still retained, fired, and formed with the other stragglers. The French faced about and left us. There were more of them than of us. The action, and the approach of danger in a shape which we had it in our power to repel, roused our dormant feelings, and we joined at Castro.59
On 6 January, with his army close to disintegration, Moore paused at the town of Vigo to rest his exhausted troops and offer battle to his pursuers. But Soult made only a few probing attacks, easily repulsed by the British outposts, and the retreat continued in darkness on the 8th. Moore had issued general orders that exhorted his men to keep order. ‘But, alas!’ wrote Pococke. ‘How could men observe order amidst such sufferings? … The officers, in many points, suffered as much as the men. I have seen officers of the Guards, and others, worth thousands, with pieces of old blankets wrapt round their feet and legs; the men pointing at them, with a malicious satisfaction, saying, “There goes three thousand a year.” ’60 He remembered many soldiers drowning their sorrows in drink. ‘They lay down intoxicated upon the snow and slept the sleep of death; or, staggering behind, were overtaken and cut down by the merciless French soldiers.’61
Also suffering were the hundreds of soldiers’ wives and children – many of them unofficial – who always followed the British Army on campaign. Their ‘agonies’, thought Anthony Hamilton of the 43rd Light Infantry, were ‘still more dreadful to behold’ than those of the men. He added:
Of these, by some strange neglect, or by some mistaken sentiment of humanity, an unusually large proportion had been suffered to accompany the army. Some of these unhappy creatures were taken in labour on the road, and amidst the storms of sleet and snow gave birth to infants, which, with their mothers, perished as soon as they had seen the light … Others in the unconquerable energy of maternal love would toil on with one or two children on their backs; till on looking round, they perceived that the hapless objects of their affections were frozen to death.62
Finally, on 11 January 1809, Moore’s depleted and exhausted force reached Corunna. It was, wrote Moore, ‘completely disorganized’ and its ‘conduct during the late march has been infamous beyond belief’.63 To the ordinary soldiers, however, the sight of the ocean promised deliverance. ‘I felt all my former despondency drop from my mind,’ wrote Pococke. ‘My galled feet trod lighter on the icy road. Every face near me seemed to brighten up. Britain and the sea are two words which cannot be disunited. The sea and home appeared one and the same.’64
Moore could not begin the evacuation until the transports, delayed by contrary winds, arrived from Vigo on 14 January. The day before, in his last letter to Lord Castlereagh, he had promised to ‘accept no terms that are in the least dishonourable to the Army, or to the Country’.65 By then the French had arrived in force, and on the 14th began a ‘cannonade’ on the British position in the hills above the harbour. It did not prevent Moore from embarking the sick and the dismounted cavalry, and all but eight of his guns – seven 6-pounders and a howitzer – which were placed in line while four Spanish guns were kept in reserve. Having helped his sick friend Donald McDonald aboard one of the transports, Private Pococke was returning to camp when he witnessed a ‘most moving’ scene: ‘The beach was covered with dead horses, and resounded with the reports of the pistols that were carrying this havoc amongst them. The animals, as if warned by the dead bodies of their fellows, appeared frantic, neighed and screamed in a most frightful manner. Many broke loose and galloped alongst the beach with their manes erect and their mouths wide open.’66
The main embarkation of the 15,000 infantrymen was scheduled for 4 p.m. on the 16th. Two and a half hours before it was due to begin, Soult began his attack on the right wing of Moore’s defences along the Monte Mero ridge, 2 miles south of Corunna. The first attack by two ‘very compact columns’ was against Lord William Bentinck’s brigade of the 4th, 42nd and 50th regiments of foot. A 23-year-old private in the 42nd Black Watch recalled:
Our artillery fired a few shots, and then retreated for want of ammunition. Our flankers were sent out to assist the pickets. The French soon formed line and advanced, driving the pickets and flankers before them, while their artillery kept up a close cannonade on our line with grape and round shot. A few of the Forty-Second were killed, and some were wounded … We had not then moved an inch in advance or retreat. Sir John came in front of the Forty-Second. He said, ‘There is no use in making a long speech, but, Forty-Second, I hope you will do as you have done before.’ With that he rode off the ground in front of us … Our colonel gave orders for us to lie on the ground at the back of the height our position was on, and, whenever the French were within a few yards of us, we were to start up and fire our muskets, and then give them the bayonet. They came up the hill cheering as if there were none to oppose them, we being out of sight. When they came to the top of the hill, all the word of command that was given was ‘Forty-Second: charge!’ In one moment, every man was up … and every shot did execution. They were so close upon us we gave them the bayonet the instant we fired … and many of us skewered pairs, front and rear rank. To the right about they went, and we after them … When we had driven them in upon their other columns, we ourselves retreated.67
