SECTION XXIII: CHAPTER IV

EVENTS IN THE SOUTH OF SPAIN. THE BATTLE OF BARROSA.
JANUARY-MARCH 1811

In the second chapter of this volume we dealt with Soult’s expedition to Estremadura and its results, but had to defer for later consideration the events which brought him back in haste to Andalusia the moment that Badajoz had fallen (March 12th). These must now be explained.

When his 20,000 men, collected from all the three corps which formed the Army of the South, set out on the last day of the old year 1810, Soult left behind him three problems, each of which (as he was well aware) might assume a dangerous aspect at any moment. We have already indicated their character[127]. Would Victor, with 19,000 men left to him for the blockade of Cadiz, be able to hold with security the immense semicircle of lines and batteries which threatened the island stronghold of the Cortes? Would the provisional garrison which had been patched up for Seville prove strong enough to defend that capital and its arsenals against any possible attack of roving Spanish detachments, from the mountains of the west and south? Would Sebastiani and the 4th Corps be able to beat back any attempt by the Army of Murcia to trespass upon the limits of the broad and rugged province of Granada? We may add that it was conceivable that all these three problems might demand a simultaneous solution. For if all the Spanish forces had been guided by a single capable brain, nothing would have been more obvious to conceive than a plan for setting them all to work at once. If a sortie from Cadiz were taken in hand, it would have the best chance of success supposing that Sebastiani were to be distracted by an invasion of Granada, and Seville threatened by any force that could be collected in the Condado de Niebla, or the mountains above Ronda.

[p. 92]Soult, as Napoleon pointed out to him two months later[128], had committed a considerable fault by not putting all the divisions left behind in Andalusia under a single commander, responsible for all parts of the kingdom alike. Victor was given no authority over Sebastiani, nor even over Daricau, who had been left as governor of Seville, or Godinot, whose depleted division occupied the province of Cordova. Napoleon, always suspicious of Soult, accused him of having neglected this precaution because he was jealous of Victor, and would not make him as great as himself[129]. Whether this was so or not, it is at any rate clear that the position was made much more dangerous by the fact that each of the three problems named above would be presented to a different commander, who would be prone to think of his own troubles alone, and to neglect those of his colleagues. If all three dangers became threatening at the same moment, each general would regard his own as the most important, and bestow comparatively little care on those which menaced the others. As a matter of fact, Victor was almost destroyed, because Sebastiani did not come to his help, when the sally from Cadiz took place early in March; and Seville was in serious danger a few days later, because there was no one who could order Godinot to march to its aid from Cordova without delay.

Soult was fully aware of all the possible perils of his absence. Apparently he thought Sebastiani was in the greater danger, for he requisitioned only a few cavalry and artillery from the 4th Corps, and left it practically intact to defend the province of Granada against the Army of Murcia. As to Seville, he considered that it could only be endangered by Ballasteros, and for that reason did his best to destroy that general’s division, by causing Gazan to hunt it as far as the borders of Portugal—a diversion which nearly wrecked the Estremaduran expedition for[p. 93] lack of infantry[130]. When Gazan had driven Ballasteros over the Guadiana, after the action of Castillejos (January 25), the Marshal thought that the Spaniard was out of the game, and no longer in a position to do harm—in which he erred, for this irrepressible enemy was back in Andalusia within a few weeks, and was actually threatening Seville early in March.

But the greatest danger was really on the side of Cadiz, where Victor, deprived of nearly all his cavalry and one regiment of infantry for the Estremaduran expedition, had also to furnish outlying detachments—a garrison for Xeres and the column with which General Remond was operating in the Condado de Niebla, far to the west[131]. He had only 19,000 men left for the defence of the Lines, of which a considerable proportion consisted of artillery, sappers, and marine troops, needed for the siege but useless for a fight in the open, if the enemy should make a sally by sea against his rear. The Duke of Belluno was anxious, and rightly so: for the nearest possible succours were Sebastiani’s troops in Granada and Malaga, many marches away, while the garrison of Cadiz was very strong, and indeed outnumbered his own force. At the beginning of February it comprised, including the urban militia, nearly 20,000 Spanish troops; Copons had just been withdrawn from the west to join it. There was also an Anglo-Portuguese division. General Graham had been left a considerable force, even after Wellington withdrew certain regiments to join in the defence of the Lines of Torres Vedras. He had two composite battalions of the Guards, the 2/47th, 2/67th, 2/87th, a half battalion of the 2/95th, the two battalions of the 20th Portuguese, and a provisional battalion of German recruits[132], as also two squadrons of the 2nd Hussars of the King’s German Legion, and two field batteries. The whole amounted to between 5,000 and 6,000 men. It is curious to note that Napoleon, in the dispatch by which he spurred Soult on to his Estremaduran expedition, assured him ‘that there had never been more than three English regiments at Cadiz, and that they had all gone to Lisbon,’ so that the Isle of Leon and city were only defended[p. 94] by ‘ten thousand unhappy Spaniards without resolution or power to resist[133].’ When the Emperor’s directions were based upon information so utterly incorrect as this, it was hard for his generals to satisfy him!

Within a few days of the withdrawal of the detachment taken by Soult from Victor, the news came to Cadiz that the 1st Corps had been weakened: and when the destination of the expedition was known, it seemed probable that no reserves had been left at Seville on which the besieging force could count. The idea of an attack on Victor was at once broached by the Regency, and accepted by General Graham; after some discussion, it was considered best not to assail the lines by a disembarkation from the Isle of Leon, but to land as large a force as could be spared in the rear of the enemy, at Tarifa, Algesiras, or some other point of Southern Andalusia which was in the hands of the Allies. Such a movement, if properly conducted, would compel Victor to draw backward, in order to hold off the Allies from the Lines. He would have to fight at some distance inland, leaving a minimum garrison to protect his forts and batteries, and it was proposed that the fleet and the troops left in Cadiz should fall upon them during his enforced absence.

The execution of this plan was deferred for some weeks, partly because of the difficulty of providing transport by sea for a large expeditionary force, partly because Gazan was unexpectedly drawn back into Andalusia by Ballasteros’s division, and was at the end of January in a position from which he might easily have reinforced Victor. When he had gone off to Estremadura, in the wake of Soult, the problem became simpler. After drawing back Copons’s division from the Condado de Niebla to Cadiz (as has already been mentioned), the Regency found themselves able to provide 8,000 men for embarkation, while leaving 7,000 regulars and the urban militia to hold Cadiz. Graham was ready to join in, with all his troops save the battalion companies of the 2/47th and the 20th Portuguese, and the doubtfully effective German battalion, which were to remain behind, for he did not wish to withdraw the whole British force from Cadiz at once. But he procured the aid of an almost equivalent number of bayonets from an external source: he wrote to General Campbell, com[p. 95]manding at Gibraltar, begging him to spare reinforcements from the garrison of that fortress and of the minor stronghold of Tarifa, at the extreme southern point of Europe, which was then maintained as a sort of dependency of Gibraltar. Campbell eagerly consented to take part in the plan and promised to lend 1,000 infantry. This assistance would bring up the British contingent to 5,000 men. The Spaniards were also to collect some small reinforcements: there was an irregular force under General Beguines operating in the Ronda mountains, and basing itself on Gibraltar. It was ordered to join the expedition when it should come to land, and (as we shall see) actually did so, with a force of three battalions or 1,600 men. The total of the troops whom it was proposed to collect amounted, therefore, to 9,600 Spaniards and 5,000 British, a force almost equal in numbers to Victor’s depleted corps. But it was clear that the Marshal would have to leave some sort of a garrison in the Lines before Cadiz, and that the Allies would have a numerical superiority, if they could force on a fight at a distance from the sea and the French base.

One cardinal mistake was made in planning the expedition. Its command was to be entrusted to General Manuel La Pe?a, then the senior officer in Cadiz, a man with a talent for plausible talking and diplomacy, but one who had already shown himself a selfish colleague and a disloyal subordinate. This was the same man who in 1808, nearly three years back, had sacrificed his chief Casta?os at the disastrous battle of Tudela[134], by refusing to march to the sound of the guns, and securing a safe retreat for himself and his 10,000 men, while the main army was being crushed, only four miles away, by Marshal Lannes. Though not personally a coward, he was a shirker of responsibilities, and incapable of a swift and heroic decision. He was ambitious enough to aspire to and intrigue for a post of importance, but collapsed when it became necessary to discharge its duties. He treated Graham in 1811 precisely as he had treated Casta?os in 1808, and it was not his fault that the sally from Cadiz failed to end in a disaster[135]. The English lieutenant-general had dis[p. 96]cretionary authority from his Government to refuse to act in any joint expedition of which he was not given the command. But anxious to bring matters to a head, and deceived by La Pe?a’s mild plausibility, he consented to take the second place, on the ground that the Spaniard contributed the larger body of troops to the enterprise.

If Graham himself had headed the united force, it is certain that the siege of Cadiz would have been raised for the moment, though what would have followed that success no man can say, for it would have brought about such a convulsion in Andalusia, and such a concentration of the French troops, that the whole of the conditions of the war in the south would have been altered. Graham had all the qualities which La Pe?a lacked—indomitable resolution, swift decision, a good eye for topography, the power of inspiring enthusiastic confidence in his troops. He was no mere professional soldier, but a crusader with a mission; indeed his personal history is one of extraordinary interest. When the French Revolution broke out he was a civilian of mature years, a Whig Member of Parliament, aged forty-four, mainly known as a great sportsman[136] and a bold cross-country rider. Yet certainly if the war of 1793 had not come to pass, he would only be remembered now as the husband of that beautiful Mrs. Graham whose portrait is one of Gainsborough’s best-known masterpieces.
Portrait of Lieutenant-General Thomas Graham

Enlarge  Lieutenant-General Thomas Graham

Driven to the Riviera in 1792 by the failing health of his wife, who died at Hyères, Graham was an eye-witness of the outbreak of violence and blind rage in France which followed Brunswick’s invasion. He himself was arrested—his wife’s coffin was torn open by a mob which insisted that he was smuggling ‘arms for aristocrats’ therein. He narrowly escaped with his life, and returned to England convinced that the French had[p. 97] become a nation of wild beasts, hostes humani generis. ‘I had once deprecated,’ he wrote at the time, ‘the hostile interference of Britain in the internal affairs of France, but what I have seen in my journey through that country makes me consider that war with her has become just and necessary in self-defence of our constitution[137].’ Widowed and childless, he thought it his duty to go to the front at once, despite of his forty-four years and his lack of military training. He devoted all his available funds to the raising, in his own county, of the 90th Foot, the ‘Perthshire volunteers,’ of which he became the honorary colonel. He could not take command of the corps, because he had no substantive military rank, but he could not keep at home. He went out to the Mediterranean as a sort of volunteer aide-de-camp to Lord Mulgrave, and afterwards, being found useful owing to his gift of languages—he knew not only Italian but German, a rare accomplishment in those days—he was entrusted with a special mission to the Austrian army of Italy. He served through all the disasters of Beaulieu and Würmser, starved in Mantua, and froze in the Tyrolese Alps.

From that time onward we find him wherever there was fighting against the French to be done—in Sicily, Minorca, Malta, Egypt, Portugal. So great were his services that, contrary to all War Office rules, his honorary colonelship was changed to a regular commission on the staff, and in 1808-9 he served first as the British attaché with Casta?os’s army, and later as one of Sir John Moore’s aides-de-camp. In reward for brilliant service in the Corunna campaign he was given in 1810 the command of the British force at Cadiz. And so it came about that this Whig Member of Parliament, who had commenced soldiering at forty-four (like Oliver Cromwell and Julius Caesar), was at sixty-two leading a British division in the field. He had an iron frame[138], and his spirit was as firm as his body—the crusade had to be fought out to the end, though the enemy was now the Corsican Tyrant, not the Atheist Republic against which he had first drawn his sword. It was in keeping with all[p. 98] his previous career that he consented to take the second place in the Tarifa expedition; to get the army started was essential—his personal position counted for nothing with him. Before a month was out he had good reason to regret that he had been so self-denying.

After many tiresome delays[139] the English contingent sailed from Cadiz on February 21st, but met with such fierce west winds, when it neared Cape Trafalgar, that the convoy could not make the difficult harbour of Tarifa, and was blown past it into Gibraltar Bay, where Graham landed on the 23rd at Algesiras. Here he found waiting for him a ‘flank battalion’ of 536 bayonets, which General Campbell had made up for him out of the six flank companies of the 1/9th, 1/28th, and 2/82nd. From Algesiras the troops marched on the 24th to Tarifa, where they picked up another reinforcement provided by Campbell, the eight battalion companies of the 1/28th, which had been doing garrison duty in that little fortress—460 men in all. Having now just 5,196 men, Graham divided the infantry into two brigades. The first under General Dilkes numbered 1,900 bayonets: it was composed of the two composite battalions of the Guards, together with the flank battalion from Gibraltar and two companies of the 95th Rifles. The second brigade, under Colonel Wheatley, had 2,633 bayonets, and consisted of the 1/28th, 2/67th, 2/87th, and another ‘flank battalion’ under Colonel Barnard, composed of the two light companies of the 20th Portuguese (the only troops of that nation which served in the expedition), those of the 2/47th, with four more companies of the 95th Rifles. There were only 206 cavalry—two squadrons of the 2nd Hussars of the King’s German Legion—and ten guns under Major Duncan.

[p. 99]The Spanish contingent had sailed three days after Graham, had met with the same rough weather, and had been much beaten about. But the troops began to arrive at Tarifa on the 26th, and were all ashore on the 27th. La Pe?a assumed command, was all politeness, and made over to Graham two unbrigaded battalions of his own, to bring up the force of the two small British brigades to a higher figure[140]. The rest of his troops were organized in two divisions under Lardizabal and the Prince of Anglona, the first five, the second six battalions strong[141]; he had brought fourteen guns, and four squadrons of horse under an English colonel in the Spanish service, Samuel Whittingham, an officer who did not add to his laurels during this expedition.

On arriving at the bridge of Facinas and the village of Bolonia, ten miles outside Tarifa, La Pe?a had to make up his mind whether he would march against the rear of the French lines before Cadiz by the track nearer to the coast, which passes through Vejer de la Frontera, Conil, and Chiclana, or by the inland road through the mountains, which runs past Casas Viejas to Medina Sidonia. The two roads at their bifurcation are separated by the long lagoon of La Janda, a very shallow sheet of water, seven miles long, which nearly dries up in summer, but was at this moment full to overflowing from spring rains[142]. To take the inland route across the mountains was by far the better course. The road was not good, but if the Allies could reach Medina Sidonia with their army intact, Victor[p. 100] would be forced to come out and attack them, at a great distance from his Lines. For it would be practically impossible for the Marshal to allow La Pe?a and Graham to establish themselves at Medina, in the rear of his head quarters, and backed by the Sierra de Jerez, from whose skirts they could send out as many detachments as they pleased, to cut the communication between Seville and the Lines. There was little danger of being taken in the rear by troops sent by the distant Sebastiani, whose nearest forces were at Marbella, eighty miles away, and whose attention was at this moment fully taken up by the local guerrilleros, who had been turned loose on him. Indeed, Sebastiani for some time thought that the expedition was directed against himself, and was preparing to concentrate and take the defensive. The only drawbacks to the Medina Sidonia route were there would be no chance of communicating along it with the garrison of Cadiz, and that the question of provisions might grow serious if the campaign were protracted, for the region was barren and the army ill provided with transport. But a few days would settle the affair—Victor would be compelled to come out at once and fight, with every man that he could bring, and while he was engaged at Medina, there would be nothing to prevent the 7,000 Spaniards in Cadiz from crossing the harbour and destroying the ill-garrisoned Lines. This in itself, even if the Allies failed to hold back the Marshal, would have an immense effect all over Andalusia[143].

La Pe?a originally intended to take the right-hand road, and ordered Beguines, who was now in the high hills to the east, about Ximena, to join him with his roving brigade at Casas Viejas. The column left Facinas late in the evening, for La Pe?a had a great and misplaced belief in night marches, by which he always hoped to gain time on the enemy, since his moves could not be discovered or reported till the next morning. He overlooked the corresponding disadvantage of the extreme slowness of progress over bad roads in rugged country, the very real danger that the troops (or some of them) might miss their way in the dark, and the inevitable fatigue to the men from losing their proper hours of sleep. Graham’s laconic diary shows how[p. 101] this worked out. ‘Marched in the evening, very tedious from filing across water (the stream which fills the head of the lagoon of La Janda) and other difficulties. Misled by the guides on quitting the Cortigo de la Janda (farm at the head of the lagoon): the counter-march made a most fatiguing night.... It was twelve noon before the troops halted, having been nineteen hours under arms.’

The troops of Lardizabal, at the head of the column, had reached Casas Viejas in the morning, but the English division in the rear of the army had got no further than the northern end of the lagoon, some thirteen miles from their starting-place at Puente de Facinas. There was a violent east wind, the night had been very cold, and the men were much fatigued.

Lardizabal on reaching Casas Viejas had found the convent, which was the only solid building there, occupied by a French post, two companies sent out by General Cassagne from Medina Sidonia to watch the high-road. Thinking at first that he was only about to be worried by guerrilleros, the French captain shut himself up behind his barricades, instead of retreating at once. When he found out his mistake, and saw that a whole army was about him, it was too late to get off without loss. La Pe?a ordered that the convent should be left alone, as he did not wish to waste time in battering and storming it. The whole of his troops had come up, including the roving force of 1,600 men from the hills under Beguines, when the French unwisely made a bolt eastward, in the hope of escaping. The little column was pursued and cut up by a squadron of Busche’s German Hussars, many being killed and captured. From the prisoners and Beguines’s scouts La Pe?a learnt that Medina Sidonia was (contrary to his expectation) held by a serious force of French—Cassagne’s detachment being now composed of five battalions of infantry, a battery, and a cavalry regiment, about 3,000 men. The walls had been repaired, it was said, and the place was in a state of defence.

The Spanish general should have rejoiced to learn that Victor had sent an appreciable part of his army so far afield—fifteen miles from Chiclana—and by advancing he could have forced the Marshal to come to this distance from his lines in order to support Cassagne. A battle would no doubt have followed[p. 102]—but it was for a battle that the army had sailed to Tarifa. And by drawing Victor’s whole fighting force so far away from Cadiz, La Pe?a would have given a unique opportunity to the garrison to come out and destroy the siege-works. Meanwhile, if the French lost the battle they would be annihilated, being off their line of retreat; if they won it, they would return to find the greater part of the siege-works destroyed.

But this was not the line of thought that guided La Pe?a; he was, as his previous record showed, a shirker of responsibilities, and the prospect of a battle on the morrow, or the day after, seems to have paralysed him. To every one’s surprise he gave orders that the army, waiting till dusk had come on, should leave the Medina road, and march across country by a bad bridle-path to Vejer, on the other route from Tarifa to Cadiz. Graham protested against a second night march, after the experience of the first, and rightly, for news came in ere night that the road along the north side of the Barbate river, which La Pe?a had intended to use, was absolutely under water from inundations. La Pe?a therefore consented to wait till the next morning (March 3rd) and to use another country road, that between the north end of the La Janda lagoon and the river into which it falls. The army marched at 8 o’clock—Lardizabal as before in front, the English division in the rear. But on reaching the intended crossing-place, it was found that this road, like that north of the river, was flooded, the lagoon having overflowed at its northern end, and joined itself in one shallow sheet of water to the Barbate. Graham, on arriving at the passage, found the Spaniards halted at the edge of the flood, and apparently at a nonplus. The energetic old man took the business out of La Pe?a’s hands—he and his staff rode into the water, and sought personally for the track of the submerged causeway, which they fortunately found to be nowhere more than three feet under the surface of the flood. He placed men along the track at intervals, to guide those who should follow, and sat on his horse in the middle of the ford encouraging the troops as they marched past him. ‘I set the example of going into the water,’ he remarks in his diary, ‘which was followed by Lacy, the Prince of Anglona, and others. The passage lasted three hours, and would have taken double that time but for the[p. 103] exertions made to force the men to keep the files connected.’ It was 12 o’clock at night before the army reached Vejer—having taken fifteen hours to cover ten miles, owing to the delays at the inundation. Every one was wet through and much fatigued, for the weather was still very cold.

It remained to be seen what the enemy would make of this move; a squadron of French dragoons had been found in Vejer by the advanced guard, and driven out, so that it was certain that Victor would get prompt news that at any rate some part of the allied army had now appeared on the western road. The Marshal, as a matter of fact, was puzzled. On the night of the 2nd he had heard from Cassagne that the enemy was in force on the Medina Sidonia road, and had cut up the post at Casas Viejas. He accordingly sent orders to Cassagne to bid him stand firm, and promised to support him with his whole disposable force. But before dawn on the 4th he got news, from the dragoons expelled from Vejer, that there was a heavy force on the western road. Had La Pe?a transferred himself from one route to another, or were the Allies operating in two columns? Cassagne reported a little later that the column opposed to him had advanced no further, but that there were still Spanish troops on the Casas Viejas road; and this was true, for La Pe?a had left a battalion and some guerrilla horse at that place, to give him news of Cassagne, if the latter should move.

But there was also the garrison of Cadiz to be watched, and it was showing signs of activity. On the night of the 2nd-3rd, when the field army had been lying at Casas Viejas, General Zayas had, in accordance with the scheme of times left with him, thrown his bridge of boats across the Santi Petri creek, and passed a battalion across it, which entrenched itself on the mud-flat, facing the French works that cut off the peninsula of the Bermeja. They threw up a strong tête-du-pont, undisturbed, being under the protection of the heavy guns in the castle of Santi Petri, and other batteries on the Isle of Leon. The move could only mean that the garrison of Cadiz intended to come out. Accordingly Victor resolved to stop its egress; waiting for the dusk on the night of the 3rd-4th, he sent six companies of picked voltigeurs to storm the tête-du-pont. This they accomplished, the heavy guns failing to stop them in the dusk: the[p. 104] Spanish battalion in the work (Ordenes Militares) was nearly annihilated, losing 13 officers and 300 men killed or taken. But the bridge itself was saved by the prompt sinking of two of its boats, and was hastily floated back to the island, where Zayas laid it up for further use. He had been much chagrined at seeing and hearing nothing of allied forces behind the French, which he had been told to look for on March 3rd[144].

Putting together the movement of Zayas, and the fact that some at least of the allied army was now on the Vejer road, the Marshal came to the correct conclusion that the army in the field was intending to get into communication with Cadiz and its garrison. Accordingly he made a new plan to suit this hypothesis: of his three divisions one, that of Villatte, was to block the neck of the peninsula along which the track from Vejer and Conil leads to the Santi Petri creek and the Isle of Leon. The other two, concentrated at Chiclana, were to wait till the allied force had found itself blocked in front by Villatte, and then to fall upon its flank, in the space of three miles that lies between the hill of Barrosa and the position where Villatte had been posted. This plan would place the intercepting division in obvious danger, since, while attacked in front by the head of the allied army, it might find Zayas attempting once more to lay his bridge, and to take it in the rear. Such a movement by the garrison could not be stopped, because the end of the peninsula, by the bridge-place, was under the guns of several heavy batteries. But Victor directed Villatte not to fight to the last, but to be contented with holding the Allies in check long enough to enable the main body to fall on their flank. The sound of his guns would be the signal for the two striking divisions to move out from the wood of Chiclana, and dash at the long column whose head would be engaged with Villatte, while its tail would still be coming along the coast many miles to the rear. For 14,000 men had only the single line of communication along which to move.
General Map of the Barrosa Campaign

Enlarge  THE BARROSA CAMPAIGN

[p. 105]Meanwhile Cassagne, at Medina Sidonia, was sent orders to find out exactly what was in front of him, and if there was no solid force, to march to join the main body on the morning of the 5th. He must have received the order to do so somewhere in the afternoon of the 4th.

Victor’s force was not so large as he would have wished. Soult had taken from him six battalions of infantry and three cavalry regiments, reducing the total of the 1st Corps left at or near Cadiz to twenty-three battalions of infantry, three regiments of cavalry, and four or five field batteries, about 15,000 men in all. There were also present in the lines 3,500 men more not belonging to the corps, viz. about 1,000 artillery and 800 engineers and sappers belonging to the siege train, and 1,600 marine troops from the flotilla which had been constructed in Cadiz bay. These of course were useless for field operations; but they served to man the lines, with the addition of three battalions—2,000 men—from the fighting force, the least that Victor thought he could spare. For the garrison of Cadiz and the English fleet might attack in force any point of the Lines during the absence of the main body. This left 13,000 men available for field operations: but Cassagne was still absent at Medina Sidonia, with five battalions, a battery, and one of the three cavalry regiments, making 3,100 men in all. There were therefore only 10,000 men left to face La Pe?a and Graham, till Cassagne should come up. Victor, according to his own dispatch, much over-estimated the force of the Allies, which he states as 8,000 English and 18,000 Spaniards, so that he went to work in rather a desperate mood, thinking that he had to fight very superior numbers, and that his only chance was to make a sudden and resolute attack when he was not expected. As a matter of fact he overstated the enemy by nearly a half, since there were really marching from Vejer only 5,000 English and under 10,000 Spaniards altogether, and no help could come to them from Cadiz till Villatte should be driven off.

Each of the three divisions which Victor had under his hand was short of several battalions; Ruffin’s, the 1st Division, and Leval’s, the 2nd, had each a battalion in the Lines and another detached with Cassagne at Medina. Villatte’s, the 3rd, had one in the Lines and three with Cassagne. Hence they took the[p. 106] field, Ruffin and Leval with six battalions each, Villatte with five only. The respective forces were 3,000, 3,800, and 2,500 bayonets[145]: each unit had its divisional battery with it. Of the two cavalry regiments, the 1st Dragoons, 400 sabres, was with Ruffin, the 2nd Dragoons, 300 sabres, with Villatte. On the evening of the 4th Ruffin’s and Leval’s men were concentrated at Chiclana, hidden behind the woods which cover it; Villatte was on the ridge of the Torre Bermeja, between the Almanza creek and the sea, right across the track leading from Vejer to Cadiz, and looking both backward and forward, with his attention ready for Zayas as much as for La Pe?a.

Meanwhile the Allies were marching straight into the middle of the trap which Victor had prepared for them. After passing Conil, the road on which their army was moving turns inland towards Chiclana, while a mere track follows the beach towards the Santi Petri. It was along this that La Pe?a was intending to move. But in the dark the head of the column followed the main road, and went several miles along it. At dawn the error was discovered, and the army, cutting across an open heath, got down to the beach[146].

The point which the allies had now reached was a mile or so south-east of the coast-guard tower of Barrosa, where an isolated eminence called the Cerro del Puerco (Boar’s Hill), crowned by a ruined chapel, looks out upon the heathy plain of Chiclana to the north, and a scrubby pine wood (covering much of the ground towards the beach) to the west[147]. The advanced cavalry got upon the hill unhindered soon after daybreak, and met no enemy, nor did patrols sent into the wood discover him for some time. Presently, however, news came back from the front[p. 107] that a French force had been discerned, drawn up between the Almanza creek and the sea, and blocking the way to Cadiz. Being outside the wood it was very visible, and seemed to be about a strong brigade of infantry with a squadron or two of horse. This was, of course, Villatte, waiting for the advance of the Allies. No other hostile troops were to be seen.

La Pe?a now told Graham that, despite of the fact that the men had been under arms for fourteen hours, and had marched as many miles in the dark, he was about to thrust this French force out of the way without a moment’s delay. Lardizabal, with the vanguard division, was to attack it at once, while the rest of the army took up a position to cover him from any possible movement of the enemy from the direction of Chiclana.

About nine in the morning Lardizabal with his five battalions reached Villatte’s front, deployed and attacked him. The forces were about equal, and the attack was repulsed with some loss; La Pe?a then ordered up the leading brigade of Anglona’s division to support the vanguard. A sharp engagement was going on, when a new fire broke out behind Villatte. Zayas, from the Isle of Leon, had recast his bridge across the Santi Petri, and was advancing to take the French in the rear. Villatte saw his danger, gave up his position across the peninsula, and hastily fell back towards the passage of the shallow Almanza creek, near the mill of the same name. He recrossed it, not without some difficulty, and then drew up to defend the passage. Lardizabal was prevented by La Pe?a from pursuing him, and halted opposite. The skirmish had been hot: Villatte had lost 337 men, the Spaniards a few more. But they had achieved their purpose, and the connexion with Cadiz had been duly established.

About noon La Pe?a sent orders to Graham to evacuate the Barrosa position, and draw in closer to the Almanza creek, to join the rest of the army. Meanwhile he would be relieved on the hill by five battalions of Cruz Murgeon and Beguines[148], to which rearguard there was added one British battalion, Browne’s composite unit consisting of the six flank companies of the 9th,[p. 108] 28th, and 82nd. Whittingham and the cavalry were to flank this force on the coast track, somewhere near the tower of La Barrosa. This force was to move off in its turn, when Graham should have reached the main body, for the Spanish general had resolved not to hold the Cerro, considering that an army of 14,000 men should not be spread out over four miles of ground, but be kept more concentrated. Graham entirely disagreed with this movement; if the Allies came down and crammed themselves into the narrow peninsula between the sea and the Almanza creek, there was nothing to prevent Victor from seizing the Barrosa heights, and placing himself across their front, in a way which would block them into the cramped position which they had assumed. The move practically threw them back on Cadiz, and sacrificed all the results of the toilsome flank march in which they had been so long engaged. Graham had in the morning urged on La Pe?a the all-importance of retaining the hill, but now saw his advice rejected. Obeying orders, however, he set his column in march towards the Torre Bermeja and the Almanza creek, through the pine wood. At the same time the rearguard under Beguines and Cruz Murgeon ascended the Cerro, and took up the post which the British division had left.

The British column did not descend to the rough track along the coast, but used a fair wood path right through the middle of the pine forest, which saved them a couple of miles of détour, and was practicable for artillery. They were soon filing along between the pines, lost to sight, and themselves unable to see a hundred yards in any direction.

At this moment, about 12.30 p.m., Victor suddenly broke out of the woods in front of Chiclana with the 7,000 men of Ruffin’s and Leval’s divisions. He was tired of waiting for Cassagne, for he had now got news that the force at Medina had started late in the morning, instead of at dawn, and would not be up for two or three hours more. His cavalry had just reported to him that the Cerro seemed to be abandoned, and that the troops formerly holding it were marching across his front through the forest. Since the main body of the enemy had been located opposite Villatte, on the Almanza creek, there seemed to be a good chance of seizing the important Barrosa position unopposed, and of striking the rear division of the Allies while it was defiling,[p. 109] strung out helplessly in a wood road, across the front of the advancing French. The orders given by the Marshal sent his cavalry regiment (three squadrons of the 1st Dragoons) to turn the heights by their south-eastern flank, and seize the coast track, while Ruffin ascended the Cerro by its gently sloping northern front, and Leval struck at the troops known to be in the wood. The French, being quite fresh, came on at a great pace; the Marshal had explained to his subordinates that haste was everything. They were clearly visible to the rearguard left on the heights, partly visible to La Pe?a, who could see their flank up the trough of the Almanza creek, but wholly invisible to Graham and his troops in the wood.

A great responsibility now fell on the Spanish officers on the Cerro; they were under orders to evacuate the heights when Graham should have got away westward. What were they to do when it suddenly became clear that they were themselves about to be attacked? They might attempt to defend the hill with the one British and five Spanish battalions which lay, unseen to the French, under the seaward slope of the Cerro: or they might simply obey orders, and retire towards the main body, abandoning their dominating position. The latter course was the one taken. The five Spanish battalions streamed down the seaward face of the hill in no very good order, and fell in there with the baggage of the whole army. All together began to retire northward; there was a block on the beach, the baggage mules were driven right and left, and many got loose and bolted. Meanwhile Whittingham with the cavalry (three Spanish[149] and two K.G.L. squadrons) ranged himself across the track, where he was soon faced by the French dragoons, who had galloped round the south-eastern face of the heights with remarkable celerity.

Whittingham’s retreat was not made without a protest against it by Colonel Browne, who urged, firstly, that it was madness to abandon the height, secondly that he had Graham’s orders to stand there, and could obey no others. The cavalry general replied that, for his part, he had resolved to retire, and offered to lend Browne one of his squadrons to cover his retreat towards[p. 110] the British division, if he would not follow him to the coast track. The fiery colonel made no reply, but turned to his battalion and ordered it to occupy the ruined chapel on the top of the Cerro and the neighbouring thickets, and to prepare for action. But in half an hour, seeing Whittingham’s column far off at the foot of the hill, and six French battalions coming in upon him, Browne gave way and descended into the pine wood in search of Graham[150]. The French—Ruffin’s division—took possession of the heights, and planted a battery upon them.

Meanwhile we must return to Graham, concealed in the wood, and marching (as it were blindfold) across the front of Leval’s approaching column. He had no cavalry with him, but presently two mounted guerrilleros rode up in haste, and told him that the French were close on his flank. Riding back to the rear of his division, he saw from the edge of the forest Beguines’s troops pouring down the near side of the Cerro, and Ruffin’s mounting its northern ascent. Leval was also visible to the left.

Graham’s mind was made up in a moment: ‘A retreat in the face of the enemy,’ he writes, ‘who was already in reach of the easy communication by the sea-beach, must have involved the whole allied army in the danger of being attacked during the unavoidable confusion, while the different corps would be arriving on the narrow ridge of Bermeja at the same time,’ i. e. he saw that he himself coming out of the wood, Whittingham and Beguines from the shore track, and the main body returning from the Almanza creek bridge, would meet in disorder on the narrow neck of the peninsula by the Torre Bermeja, and would be unable to form an orderly line of battle. Even if they did, and then held their ground, the object of the whole expedition was lost, and the French, in possession of the Cerro del Puerco, once more blocked the army into Cadiz.

The alternative was to take the offensive before the two French columns had united, and to attack them while they were still coming upon the ground, and before they had drawn up in any regular order. It was evident that they were hurrying forward without any notion that they were liable to be thrown[p. 111] on the defensive at a moment’s notice. In three minutes Graham had made up his mind to attack himself, instead of allowing himself to be chased into the Bermeja position. The wood, in which his division lay concealed, enabled him to hide his movement, though it made that movement perilously disorderly. The orders given were simple: the leading brigade, that of Colonel Wheatley, was to push straight through the wood till it reached the northern edge, and then form there, and attack Leval. The rear brigade, that of General Dilkes, was to counter-march down the wood-path on which it was engaged, till it too cleared the wood, and then to form up and attack Ruffin on the slopes of the Cerro del Puerco. The ten guns, in the centre of the marching column, were to push up a side track which seemed passable, and to form on Wheatley’s right, in the centre between the two brigades. Meanwhile these movements would take some time to execute, and the French were coming closer to the wood every minute. It was necessary to hold them back at all costs till a line could be formed. With this object Graham resolved to throw forward on each front a light infantry force, which should engage the enemy, regardless of order and of losses, till the main body got up. On the left Barnard’s four companies of the 95th Rifles and the two companies of the 20th Portuguese under Colonel Bushe, about 700 men in all, were ordered to break through the wood directly before them, without any attempt at formation, and when they reached its edge, to sally straight out at Leval’s front, in the best skirmishing line they could make. On the right there was a force already to the front—Browne’s flank battalion, 536 muskets, which had just descended unwillingly from the Cerro, and was visible at its foot.

This last force was near Graham as he sat on his horse among the trees at the wood’s end. He cantered up to Browne, and asked him why the Cerro had been abandoned. ‘Because five battalions of Spaniards went off before the enemy came within cannon-shot,’ was the reply. ‘Well, it’s a bad business, Browne; you must instantly turn round again and attack.’ The flank battalion began to extend into skirmishing order, when Graham, after a moment’s reflection, said, ‘I must show something more serious than skirmishing. Close the men into[p. 112] compact battalion! And then attack in your front and immediately.’ Dilkes’s brigade was coming up, but was still a mile away in the wood, and Browne came out of the trees into the open absolutely isolated, to attack uphill six battalions and a battery with a two-deep line of just 536 men[151]. Blakeney says that his colonel rode into action singing the old naval song—

‘Now cheer up, my lads, ’tis to glory we steer,’

a tune to which he was much addicted at all times in and out of season.

About the same time, or a few minutes later, Barnard’s and Bushe’s scattered and uneven line burst out of the northern edge of the wood a mile away, and found themselves facing Leval’s division at the distance of only some 400 yards. This force, quite unaware that any enemy was yet near, was advancing in two columns each of three battalions, the right one composed of the 54th regiment and a battalion of grenadiers réunis, the left of the 8th regiment followed by a single battalion of the 45th. Their divisional battery was following on their left rear. Barnard, who got a little further to the front than the Portuguese, was facing the French 54th, Bushe, who was drawn back a little in échelon, was opposite the French 8th. They had hardly opened their fire, which had great effect because the enemy had no screen of voltigeurs out to cover him, and was caught unprepared for an infantry fight, when Duncan’s ten guns, which had made extraordinary good pace through the wood, appeared, and unlimbering at its edge began to fire shrapnel into the leading battalions of the French. Behind them the two companies of the 47th, which properly belonged to Barnard’s provisional battalion, took post as their supports.

Thus the battle was suddenly begun on both fronts, but Graham had only 500 men up on one side, and 900 with the guns on the other. The main body was coming on through the wood behind in an extraordinarily mixed order. When Graham gave orders to Wheatley’s brigade to face to their right flank and push through the wood northward, and to Dilkes’s brigade to turn about on the road and return to the[p. 113] Cerro by the way they had come, there was no small confusion. By some misunderstanding the rear companies of the 67th, which was the last battalion in Wheatley’s brigade, faced about and followed Dilkes, though the leading companies went off with their proper companions, the 28th and 87th. On the other hand, by a compensating mistake, the two companies of the Coldstream Guards, which belonged to Dilkes, turned north into the wood and followed Wheatley[152]. The brigades exchanged, as it were, 250 men with each other. In addition the battalions, owing to the sudden inversion of their column of march, were all out of their proper order in their brigades, and went into action ‘almost anyhow.’

But while a line of some sort was being formed, the screen of light troops which Graham had thrown forward, to detain the enemy, during the deployment of the main body, had done its duty by allowing itself to be knocked to pieces while attacking fivefold numbers. It had to be sacrificed to gain time, and carried out its orders completely. We will take the fortunes of the right-hand force first.

Browne’s composite battalion had started from a position close under the edge of the pine wood; it had first to cross a broad but shallow ravine, and then to climb the gentle slope of the Cerro, where it became fully visible to the enemy, though there was a little cover here and there upon the hillside, in the form of scattered bushes and slight dips in the ground. The French allowed the line to advance a little way up the ascent, and then opened upon it both with a field battery placed close to the chapel on the summit, and with the musketry fire of the three battalions which formed their right wing. Blakeney,[p. 114] our ever-useful authority for this side of the battle, says that the first salvo of the French knocked over more than 200 officers and men out of 536 forming the line. Browne ordered the men to close to the centre, and endeavoured to continue his climb; this was done with much difficulty, but, before the advance could be resumed, more than fifty men more were killed or wounded. All the exertions of the colonel could not form a third line—fourteen officers out of twenty-one were down, and more than half the rank and file. The remainder now scattered; the men did not retreat, but threw themselves down, and commenced independent firing from behind bushes, hillocks, and any other cover they could find. The French made no attempt to fall upon them by descending the hill, as would have seemed natural. The reason was that by the time that the flank battalion had been disposed of, the main body of Dilkes’s brigade had come out of the wood, and was visible forming up at the foot of the hill to deliver the real assault.

The Guards had obtained the necessary time to come up and choose their ground through the absolute martyrdom of the flank battalion. Dilkes did not repeat the attack on the same slope over which Browne had advanced, but pushed some distance to the right, where the hillside showed more cover in the way of scattered bushes and trees, and some dead ground hid the men by its steepness from the fire of the battery on the crest above. Blakeney describes them as strung out on a most irregular front, a confused mass rather than a formed line. The whole, while advancing, kept taking ground to their right, so as to come up the hillside opposite Ruffin’s left wing. Their extreme flank was covered by Norcott’s two companies of rifles in more extended order. Partly owing to the cover, partly to the difficulty found by the French guns in getting their fire to bear, Dilkes’s brigade got wellnigh to the top of the hill before it suffered any very serious losses. But on clearing the last underwood, and reaching smooth ground, it was charged by the four battalions of Ruffin’s left—two of the 24th Line supported by the two reserve battalions of grenadiers réunis. This was the crisis of the battle in the southern half of its progress. By all the rules of French military art four battalion columns, fresh and well ordered, charging down hill, should have[p. 115] been able to break through a disordered line of decidedly inferior strength pushing upwards against them. Dilkes had only 1,400 men, the four French battalions just over 2,000. Nevertheless, the impossible happened. When the two columns of the 24th Ligne came down, with drums beating and levelled bayonets, against the centre of the firm, if disorderly, line in front, they were checked by the furious fire that broke out against them from the semicircle into which they had pushed. This was one more example of the fact established at Maida five years before, and reaffirmed at Vimiero, Talavera, and Bussaco, that no column could break the British line by mere impetus. In this case the French had every advantage, since they were absolutely intact troops, and had the ground entirely in their favour, while the Guards and the wing of the 67th opposed to them had marched two miles in haste, had then climbed a steep 200-foot slope under fire, had lost their order, and were firing up hill. But the fire was delivered with astounding accuracy, considering that the men were blown with their climb and dreadfully exhausted. The whole head of each of the descending columns was blown to pieces. The rest came to a standstill, and crowding together in a disorderly clump, opened an irregular fire against the British line.

The Marshal, who was present in person on the top of the Cerro, then brought up his reserve, the two battalions of grenadiers under General Chaudron Rousseau. He himself and the brigadier were both distinctly seen leading on the column, the Marshal waving his large white-plumed hat over his head. This charge was delivered against the right of Dilkes’s line, where the 3rd Guards and wing of the 67th lay, that of the 24th Ligne had been more against the centre and the 1st Guards. But the result was the same, though the contest was more long and bloody. The grenadiers are said to have struggled forward, losing heavily at each step, till their front was within a very few yards of Dilkes’s line: it was only then that they halted and began to fire—a fatal step in such a contest, where impetus was the sole chance of the attacking mass, and superiority in musketry fire (owing to the longer front) was on the side of the English line. This of course was a terribly murderous business to both sides, as the figures presently to be quoted will show. But as in[p. 116] all similar contests during the Peninsular War, the line hit harder than the column. The four French battalions began at last to give way, and could not be kept together. Then Victor tried to bring in the two left battalions of his line to their aid, but these two units were pestered and impeded, when they began to move off from their first position, by the remains of Browne’s flank battalion, which (though reduced to under 300 muskets) began to press forward again, when the troops hitherto in their front commenced to move off to the right. ‘They darted from behind trees, briars, brakes, and out of hollows,’ says Blakeney. ‘I could imagine myself like Roderick Dhu upon Benledi’s side—it was a magic effect. We confidently advanced up the hill and, unlike most advances, in this one our numbers increased as we proceeded, soldiers of the flank battalion joining at every step.’ This scattered little force hung on to the flank of Victor’s right, and prevented it from rallying the broken force now recoiling from in front of Dilkes. The flankers had even the good fortune to capture a howitzer from the left of Victor’s battery placed by the chapel on the hilltop; another gun was taken by the 1st Guards in their forward progress.

It must have been just at this crisis that the whole French mass broke; up to this moment it had been recoiling sullenly, still keeping up some fire from its rear. But now the observer saw[153], ‘with loud and murmuring sounds, Ruffin’s division and Rousseau’s chosen grenadiers rolling with a whirling motion down into the valley below, leaving their two brave generals mortally wounded on the hill, which was left in possession of their bloodstained conquerors.’

The exhausted victors halted for a short time to re-form, and were in a more orderly line than they had hitherto shown when they commenced to follow the enemy down the slope. The casualties in this part of the field may now be stated, for neither party was to lose many more men in the last episode of the fight. Dilkes’s brigade and Browne’s flank battalion had gone up the hill with 76 officers and 1,873 men. They lost 25 officers and 588 men—about 10 men out of every 31 in the fight. The French loss was positively more, proportionately not quite so great. In the six battalions of Ruffin and Chaudron Rousseau[p. 117] there seem to have been about 108 officers and 3,000 men present; of these 36 officers and 840 men were left on the hill, i. e. 10 men in every 35. The trophies remaining with the victors were two guns and 107 unwounded prisoners, beside the multitude of disabled men left on the slope[154].

While this bloody business had been going on upon the Cerro del Puerco, it may be asked what were the Spaniards on the coast road doing—Whittingham’s squadrons and the five battalions of Cruz Murgeon and Beguines. The last named, with his three battalions, shepherding what was left of the baggage-train, quietly marched off along the sea, and joined La Pe?a by the Torre Bermeja. Whittingham was of a little positive use; he continued all through the fight to ‘contain’ and occasionally to bicker with the French cavalry regiment (1st Dragoons) that faced him near the Torre Barrosa. The two battalions of Cruz Murgeon supported him. This force certainly did not do its share—180 German Hussars, 300 Spanish horse, and 1,000 Spanish foot simply kept out of action 400 French horse. This was something, but not much, for the dragoons could not have interfered very effectively on the hill against Dilkes’s advance, because the south side of the Cerro is too precipitous for horsemen. In short, Whittingham’s statement in his report to La Pe?a, that ‘all the cavalry fulfilled its duty brilliantly’ is a sad overstatement of the case.

Let us turn now to the other half of the fight, where Wheatley’s brigade and Duncan’s guns were facing Leval on the open plain just outside the edge of the wood. At the moment when Browne attacked the Cerro, Barnard’s rifles and Bushe’s Portuguese were throwing themselves in a no less resolute fashion upon the six French battalions in their front. They had the advantage of being invisible to the enemy till they emerged from the wood, only 300 yards in his front, and of being supported, within a few minutes of their arrival, by Duncan’s ten guns, while Browne had no artillery assistance whatever, and was seen by the French for half a mile before he got near them.

The confusion in Leval’s division on being suddenly attacked[p. 118] by an unexpected swarm of skirmishers pouring out of the wood was extreme. So much were they taken aback, that Vigo-Roussillon of the 8th Line assures us in his memoirs that a false alarm of cavalry was raised, and that his regiment, and the first battalion of the 54th, formed square before the mistake was recognized, and caught some shells from Duncan’s guns in that uncomfortable situation, before they had time to deploy for action against infantry. This they had to do under a heavy fire from Barnard’s riflemen, who had advanced quite close to them. Leval’s fighting formation was the usual ‘column of divisions,’ i. e. a front of two companies and a depth of three in each battalion, or (since these units averaged 650 men each, and the companies over 100 bayonets) a front of seventy-two men and a depth of nine. The length of Barnard’s skirmishing line, with his 400 rifles, seems to have covered the front of the right battalion of the 54th and the left battalion of the 8th—some 1,300 men. The 95th did considerable execution on them while they were getting out of square formation: but when the columns advanced firing, the skirmishing line had to fall back. Its loss was heavy—sixty-five killed and wounded; among the latter Barnard, commanding the battalion. The next troops whom the French encountered were the flank companies of the 20th Portuguese—330 men only, who had advanced on the right rear of the 95th, supporting them in échelon. This was a new corps, which had been sent to Cadiz the moment it was raised in 1809, and had never been under fire before. Considering their hopeless position, alone in front of an advancing division, the Portuguese behaved very well; they held their ground for some time, while their colonel, Bushe, as is recorded by an eye-witness, rode slowly backward and forward behind them with his spectacles on, crying as the balls whistled past, ‘Que bella musica,’ to encourage his men. But he was soon mortally wounded[155], and after his fall the line melted away and[p. 119] drifted to the rear, after having kept a battalion of the French 8th engaged for some minutes: proportionately its loss was much the same as that of the Rifles—56 killed and wounded out of 332 present—one man in six.

The first act of the drama on this front was thus complete; the detaining force sent out by Graham had been, as he expected, driven in with loss, though not an appalling loss of 50 per cent., such as Browne’s gallant flankers had suffered on the Cerro. But the main body was now up, and had formed in the edge of the wood, to the left of Duncan’s guns, with no loss or interruption, since it had been well covered all the time. There were now some 1,400 men in line: the 28th, 450 strong, on the left, then the 211 bayonets of the Coldstreamers, the 87th, nearly 700 strong, in the centre; beyond them the right wing of the 67th, about 250 bayonets, next to the guns, which were still under the protection of the flank companies of the 47th which served as their escort throughout the fight. The broken screen of light troops which had just retired was by no means out of action; the 95th formed up again behind the 28th, the Portuguese behind the 87th, and both were used again before the battle was over.

The formation of the French at this moment was an uneven line of four battalion columns,—counting from their left, 1/8th, 2/8th, 2/54th, 1/54th; the other two battalions were in reserve, the 1/45th behind the French battery, which was now engaged with Duncan’s guns, the provisional battalion of grenadiers more to the right, and some distance behind the 54th regiment. The whole was advancing, but slowly: the battalions in the front line were firing; the centre was a little more to the front than the wings, the 2/8th being ahead of the other battalions because (as its chef de bataillon remarks in his memoir) he only allowed his men to fire volleys by order, while the units on his right and left were using independent fire. All had suffered in the previous fight with Barnard and the Portuguese, and much needed time to re-form, which was not granted them, because the English main line charged the moment that the light troops had cleared off from its front. It is curious to note in the French memoirs that the authors all write as if they had an oppressive feeling that the superiority of numbers was against them, and that they were being led to a forlorn hope. This was caused partly by the[p. 120] immense extent of the British line in proportion to its depth, still more by the happy existence of the wood behind Wheatley’s brigade. It had already vomited out two lively attacking lines, and the enemy presupposed a third in reserve; nearly all the French narratives definitely say that they were attacked by three lines, while really there was only one, with the screen of light troops, which had already been used up. As to the complaint concerning inferior numbers, it is certain that Leval’s division had 3,800 men, and Wheatley’s brigade only 2,500. The only superiority of the British was that, in the artillery duel now going on to the right of the line, they had ten guns to six, and soon crushed the French battery, so that it gave no effective support to its infantry. Only one of the French battalions attempted to deploy into line—this was the 2nd of the 54th, which lay opposite the British 28th—the others kept on from first to last in column of divisions. An eye-witness (Surtees of the 95th) remarks, ‘they never got into line, nor did they ever intend to do so, I believe, but advanced in solid bodies, firing from their front[156].’

The fight, owing to the French centre being slightly advanced, began a little earlier there than on the wings, the first clash being between the column of the French 2/8th, led by Vigo-Roussillon, and the line of the 2/87th, led by that enthusiastic fighter, Major Gough. We have narratives from both of them, and each insists that he kept down the fire of his men till they were within a very short distance of the enemy—sixty yards, says Vigo-Roussillon, twenty-five, says Gough. There was then a single volley exchanged, and the French column, much the harder hit of the two, broke up. ‘As they were in column when they broke,’ says Gough, ‘they could not get away. It was therefore a scene of most dreadful carnage, and I must own my weakness; as I was in front of the regiment I was in the very middle of them, and I could not cut down one, though I might have twenty, they seemed so confounded and confused[157].’ There was indeed a fearful crowding and mêlée here, for the 1st battalion of the French 8th, yielding before the fire of the British guns and the troops to the right of Gough, the wing of the 67th, fell[p. 121] back sideways against their own second battalion, and became mixed in one mass with them. Thus the 87th were sweeping before them, and ploughing through, a crowd of some 1,400, or allowing for previous losses, 1,200 men, while the companies of the 67th were firing into its flank and rear. The 8th Ligne suffered worse losses than any other troops on the field that day, save Browne’s heroic flank battalion, losing about 50 per cent. of the men who went into action—726 killed, wounded, and taken out of 1,468 present. The colonel, Autié, was killed, and one of the two battalion chiefs, Lanusse, while the other, Vigo-Roussillon, was wounded and taken prisoner. The eagle was captured from the middle of the 1st battalion after a desperate struggle with the colours-guard; Ensign Keogh of the 87th, who first got hold of it, was bayonetted twice and killed; Sergeant Masterson[158] then ran the aquilifère through with his pike, dragged the eagle away, and kept it during the rest of the mêlée. This was the first eagle captured by the British during the Peninsular War, and its arrival in London was rightly made an occasion of considerable pomp and ceremony. The eagle was presented to the Prince Regent in person, who granted to the 87th the right to bear an eagle and a laurel wreath above the harp on the regimental colours and appointments, and the title of the ‘Prince of Wales’s Own Irish Regiment.’ Gough was given a brevet lieutenant-colonelcy at once, and Sergeant Masterson, who had captured the eagle, received a commission in his own regiment; he and his descendants have served in it almost throughout the nineteenth century.

The rout of the 8th Ligne was not the last triumph of the 87th on that day; driving the remains of that unfortunate corps in front of them, they came upon the battalion of the 45th Ligne, which had hitherto been standing in reserve behind the French battery, and which Leval had just ordered up to support the broken first line. Gough, with the greatest difficulty, succeeded in forming about half his scattered though victorious regiment to face this new enemy. But there was hardly a collision: all the other French units were broken by this time, and the 45th hesitated. ‘After firing until we came within about[p. 122] fifty paces of them,’ writes Gough, ‘they (for us fortunately) broke and fled, for had they done their duty, fatigued as my men were at the moment, they might have cut us to pieces.’ That this battalion cannot have behaved well is sufficiently shown by the casualty list—out of 700 men present it only lost 55—far the smallest proportional loss in the whole French army that day. Probably the weakness of its resistance is partly to be accounted for by the fact that it was being outflanked by the wing of the 67th, who must have been extending in this direction at the moment, prolonging the line of the 87th eastward. In its double victory the 87th lost 173 men out of 700 in the field. There remains the left wing of this fight to be dealt with. Here the French 54th, in two battalion columns, was facing the British 1/28th and the 200 Coldstreamers on their right. This was the only part of the field in which the French tried at all to man?uvre: the right battalion of the 54th began to deploy and to turn the British flank, by moving westward into the edge of the pine wood, but with little effect. We have a short account of this fight in the memoirs of Cadell of the 28th.

‘We had formed line under cover of the 95th, and then advanced to meet their right wing, which was coming down in close column—a great advantage—and here the coolness of Colonel Belson was conspicuous: he moved us up without firing a shot, close to their right battalion, which just then began to deploy. The Colonel then gave orders to fire by platoons from centre to flanks, and low; “Fire at their legs and spoil their dancing.” This was kept up for a short time, with dreadful effect. The action being now general all along the line, we twice attempted to charge. But the enemy, being double our strength (since our flank companies were away), only retired a little on each occasion. Finally, giving three cheers, we charged a third time, and succeeded: the enemy gave way and fled in every direction.’ Of all Leval’s division there now remained unbroken only the single battalion of grenadiers réunis under Colonel Meunier behind the right rear. The routed 54th fled diagonally to take cover behind it. Belson did not pursue very rapidly, and this wing of the beaten division moved off to the flank, covered by the grenadiers, and presently met the wrecks of the 8th and the 45th not far north of the Laguna del Puerco, the pool[p. 123] which lies beyond the heath, to the east. It may not be out of place to give the losses: the 54th, with 1,300 men present, lost 323—about one man in four. The grenadiers hardly suffered at all, never having come into close action. Of the British opposite them, the 28th, with 450 men in the field, had 86 casualties; the Coldstream companies lost 58 out of 211[159].

Just as Leval’s division arrived near the Laguna, it was joined by the wrecks of Ruffin’s, descending in disorder from the northern slope of the Cerro. It says much for the resolution of Victor that he succeeded in halting the two disorganized masses, and deployed two or three comparatively intact battalions and the ten guns which remained to him, to cover the rallying of the rest. At the same moment his cavalry, the 1st Dragoons, which had galloped away round the east side of the Cerro when Ruffin was beaten off it, came in and drew up on the right and left of the whole. It was a bold bid to secure an unmolested retreat, for no more could be hoped. Some time was available for rallying the troops, for Graham had also to get his exhausted men into order. They came up at last, Wheatley’s brigade on the left, Dilkes’s on the right, the guns in the centre. The latter were set to play on the new front of the French, which they did with great effect, the enemy being in a cramped mass. The skirmishers went forward, and a third separate engagement seemed about to begin, when a small new force intervened. This was one of the two squadrons of German hussars, which had followed the French dragoons around the back of the Cerro, not on the orders of Whittingham, who made no haste to pursue, but on those of Graham’s aide-de-camp Ponsonby, who had carried them off on his own responsibility. Coming like a whirlwind across the lower slope of the hill, this squadron upset the French squadron of the 1st Dragoons which formed Victor’s flank guard on this side, and drove it in upon the infantry. Small though the shock was, it sufficed to upset the equilibrium of the demoralized French divisions. They went off in a sudden rush, leaving behind them two more guns, and streamed across the plain towards Chiclana.

The battle was over; there was no pursuit, for the cautious[p. 124] Whittingham came up ten minutes too late with the rest of the cavalry, in time to see the last of the enemy disappearing in the woods. With him came up also the two infantry battalions under Cruz Murgeon, and these were the only Spanish troops that Graham saw during the battle.

It may be noted that we have hitherto not had occasion to say one word of General La Pe?a or his two infantry divisions since the main action began. On being informed, at the same time as Graham, of the approach of Victor from Chiclana, La Pe?a had no thought save to defend the isthmus by the Torre Bermeja against the approaching enemy. He drew up his own eleven battalions across it in a double or treble line, while Zayas, with those which had come out of Cadiz, watched Villatte across the Almanza creek. When Beguines appeared from the Cerro by the coast-track, he was put into the same mass, which must have risen to something like 10,000 men. Presently news came from the wood that Graham had faced about and was fighting the French. La Pe?a, as his own dispatch shows, concluded that the English must inevitably be beaten, and refused to stir a man to support them or to bring them off. Zayas repeatedly asked leave to march up to join Wheatley’s flank, or to cross the Almanza and to attack Villatte, but was refused permission. The first report, to the effect that Graham was driving the French back, La Pe?a refused to credit. It was not till the fugitives of Leval’s division were seen retreating past the head of the Almanza creek, that he could be got to accept the idea that Graham was victorious. And when pressed to join in the pursuit by Zayas, he merely said that the men were tired, and the day far spent. The reaping of the fruits of victory might be left for the morrow.

When it is remembered that La Pe?a was only two miles from Wheatley’s fighting-ground, and three from the Cerro, his conduct seems astounding as well as selfish. Graham’s fight lasted nearly two hours. La Pe?a could have ridden over, to see what was going on, in a quarter of an hour. He refused to stir, and deliberately sacrificed his allies, because he had got a comfortable, almost an impregnable, position across the narrow isthmus, and would not move out of it, whatever might happen to Graham. This timid and selfish policy was an exact repetition of his betrayal of Casta?os at Tudela in 1808. With his 10,000[p. 125] men he could have crushed Villatte if he had advanced on one front, or have annihilated the remnants of Ruffin and Leval, if he had chosen to act on the other.
Map of the Battle of Barrosa

Enlarge  BARROSA

He had his reward: next morning Graham, after collecting his wounded and his trophies, recrossed into the Isle of Leon, formally giving notice that in consequence of yesterday’s proceedings, he was forced to withdraw his consent, given in February, to serve under La Pe?a, and to fall back on the discretional orders given by the British Government not to undertake any operations in which he was not himself in chief command. It is impossible to blame him; no one could deny, after what had happened on the 5th, that it was absolutely unsafe to go out in La Pe?a’s company. Wellington sent his complete approval to Graham, well remembering his own experiences with Cuesta in 1809. ‘I concur in the propriety of your withdrawing to the Isla on the 6th,’ he wrote, ‘as much as I admire the promptitude and determination of your attack on the 5th[160].’

The division marched back into the Isla with only 4,000 men in the ranks; 1,238 had fallen or been disabled at Barrosa—almost one casualty among every four men in the field. But Victor had been hit much harder; out of 7,300 men in the divisions of Leval and Ruffin much more than one in four, viz. no less than 2,062, were hors de combat; 262 had been killed, 1,694 wounded, 134 unwounded prisoners were taken, along with the eagle and five guns[161]. The units that had fought in the Cerro and on the heath by the wood were absolutely demoralized; it would have been impossible to put them in line again for several days.

If the slightest push forward had been made on the 6th, it is certain that the siege would have been raised. Victor had rallied the broken troops behind the wood of Chiclana on Villatte’s comparatively intact division, and had been joined in the late afternoon by Cassagne’s 3,000 men, who had at last come up from Medina Sidonia. But there was panic all along the Lines: while the battle had been going on, English and Spanish gunboats had threatened their garrison, and had made small disem[p. 126]barkations at one or two points; a battery had been captured near Santa Maria. If a more serious attack were made from the sea next morning, it was clear that the line would break at some point. ‘The sinister phrases “destruction of the forts” and “abandonment of the position” flew from mouth to mouth[162].’ Victor called a council of war, and proposed to offer a second battle behind Chiclana; but he found little support among the generals. It was finally decided that, if the Allies should come on in full force next morning, only such resistance should be made as would allow time to blow up most of the forts, and burn the stores and the flotilla. The 1st Corps would retreat on Seville. Victor proposed that one or two positions, where there were solid closed works, like Fort Sénarmont and the Trocadero, should be left garrisoned, and told to defend themselves until the army should return, strengthened by Soult and Sebastiani, to relieve them. It is doubtful whether he would really have risked this move, since the time of his return would have been most uncertain, and he might very probably have been making a present to the enemy of any troops left behind in isolated posts.

On the morning of the 6th the French retired behind the Saltillo river, leaving the 3rd Division (now commanded by Cassagne, for Villatte had been wounded) on the further side, with orders to retire when seriously attacked, and to issue a signal for the blowing up of all the forts of the south wing of the Lines, at the moment that the retreat should begin. Cassagne was then to rejoin the Marshal behind the Rio San Pedro, beyond Puerto Real, skirmishing as he went. But no trace of the Allies was to be seen on the morning of the 6th, and Cassagne was not forced to move back, though by mistake one battery was blown up without the signal being given[163]. The only sign of life on the part of the enemy was that a swarm of English gunboats and launches appeared at the north end of the lines, and threw ashore 600 seamen and marines, who occupied Puerto Santa Maria for some hours, and destroyed all the smaller batteries between that place and Rota unhindered. For the French had concentrated in[p. 127] the fort of Santa Catalina and abandoned all their minor posts. But the flotilla withdrew at dusk, leaving Victor much puzzled as to the purpose of his adversaries. On the morning of March 7th he sent out a cavalry reconnaissance of several squadrons, which brought back the astonishing news that it had explored the whole of the country between Chiclana and the sea, including the battlefield, and had seen no hostile troops, save a large encampment on the Bermeja isthmus, just above the bridge of boats leading into the Isla de Leon.

What had happened was that La Pe?a had determined to give up the expedition and retire to Cadiz. He had declined to listen to a proposition made by Graham and Admiral Keats that he should advance cautiously towards Chiclana, while the British naval and land forces made a combined attack upon the Trocadero[164]. He did not even send out cavalry patrols to discover what had become of Victor; if they had gone forth, they would have found that the Marshal had retired beyond the Saltillo, and would have discerned his preparations for a general retreat. But after remaining encamped by the Torre Bermeja during the whole of the 6th and the greater part of the 7th, the Spanish army crossed the bridge of boats into the Isla, and took it up behind them. Only Beguines and his three battalions were left on the continent, with orders to return to their old haunts in the Ronda mountains. This little force retired to Medina Sidonia on the 8th, and repulsed there a French column of 600 men which came up to occupy the town. But next day a whole brigade marched against them, whereupon Beguines evacuated Medina and went off towards San Roque and Algesiras.

Victor was therefore able on the 8th to reoccupy the evacuated southern wing of his lines, and to issue an absurd dispatch, in which he claimed that Barrosa had been a victory. But for the[p. 128] loss of 2,000 men, and a severe shock inflicted on the morale of his troops, he was in exactly the same position that he had held on the 4th. The whole fruits of the battle of Barrosa had been lost. What they might have been it is possible up to a certain point to foresee. Supposing that Graham and not La Pe?a had been in command, the army, raised to nearly 20,000 men by the junction of Zayas and of the 2,000 Anglo-Portuguese still in Cadiz, would have marched on Chiclana upon the 6th. Victor would have blown up the Lines and retired towards Seville, but there would have been no reinforcements for him there, and he could only have been brought up to fighting strength by the calling in of Sebastiani and Godinot. But, if these generals came up to his aid, Granada and Cordova would have had to be evacuated, and the insurgents would have swept all over Eastern Andalusia. The Allies could not have held the field, for even before Soult’s return from Badajoz there were still 50,000 French troops south of the Sierra Morena. The siege of Cadiz would ultimately, no doubt, have been recommenced, Granada and Cordova reoccupied. But meanwhile the immense work spent on the Lines would have had to be recommenced de novo, and the ascendancy of the French arms in the south would have received a rude shock. Possibly Soult might have blown up Badajoz after its fall on March 12th, instead of holding it, for he would have required all his strength to reconquer Andalusia. But further than the immediate result of the inevitable raising of the siege of Cadiz it is useless to make speculations.

The alarms of the French in Andalusia did not end with Victor’s reoccupation of the lines. Another episode was still to be played out before matters settled down. The indefatigable Ballasteros, having rested for a short time in Portugal, came back into the Condado de Niebla in the end of February with 4,000 men. He defeated on the Rio Tinto General Remond, whose weak column was the only French force left west of the Guadalquivir since Gazan’s departure (March 2). He then marched promptly on Seville, having good information of the weakness of the garrison that had been left there. On March 5th, the day of Barrosa, he was at San Lucar la Mayor, only twenty miles from the great city. The governor, Daricau, came out against him and joined Remond with 1,600 men and[p. 129] three guns, all that he could dispose of, leaving Seville in the hands of a miserable garrison, composed of convalescents and Juramentados of doubtful faith. If Daricau had been beaten, the city and all its establishments must have been lost in a day. But Ballasteros refused to fight, and retired behind the Rio Tinto, having had false news that a force sent from Estremadura by Soult was on his flank. Daricau returned to Seville on March 9th, leaving Remond to observe Ballasteros, and was joined by some detachments sent very tardily by Godinot to strengthen the garrison. But he had received such alarming accounts of the results of the battle of Barrosa, that he sent these troops on to Victor, and remained with a very weak force in the city. But on March 9th Ballasteros, suddenly coming back from the Rio Tinto, surprised Remond at La Palma, took two guns from him, and drove him back into Seville. On the 11th the Spanish general was back at San Lucar, and causing great dismay to Daricau, who sent urgent demands for help to Soult. Since Barrosa he could look for no help from elsewhere. He was saved by the rumour of the capitulation of Badajoz, which frightened Ballasteros away, for the Spaniard rightly judged that Soult could, and must, send a considerable force against him, now that his hands were freed.

When, therefore, the Marshal, as we have already seen[165], came back in haste to Andalusia with Gazan’s division, fearing that he might find Ballasteros in Seville, and Graham pursuing Victor from the evacuated lines of Cadiz, he was agreeably surprised to find that both dangers had been avoided, and that the crisis in Andalusia was at an end. His further movements belong to a different campaign, and will be related in their due place.

Meanwhile Graham and La Pe?a were engaged in a violent controversy. The British general had sent the most scathing comments on his colleague’s conduct to the ambassador, Henry Wellesley, and to Wellington, and made his complaints also to the Regency. La Pe?a on the other hand claimed the credit of the victory of Barrosa for his own skilful management; according to his magniloquent dispatches all had gone well, till Graham spoilt the campaign by taking his division back to Cadiz. The Regency seemed partly to believe him, as they[p. 130] conferred on him the Grand Cross of the Order of Charles III, though at the same time they offered Graham the title of a grandee of Spain, which he refused, for he would not be honoured in such company. But Spanish as well as British public opinion was so much against La Pe?a, that he was almost immediately deprived of his command, which was given to the Marquis Coupigny; while Graham, whose strong language had made it impossible for him to be left in contact with the Regency, was withdrawn to serve with Wellington in Portugal, and made over the charge of the Anglo-Portuguese troops at Cadiz to General Cooke. Summing up the results of the Barrosa campaign, we may say that all it had accomplished was so to alarm Soult that he came back in haste from Estremadura, leaving there under Mortier a force far too weak to threaten any harm to Wellington and Portugal. But even if Barrosa had never been fought, Soult would have been harmless in any case, because Masséna was gone from Santarem before Badajoz fell.