Depend upon it, sooner or later this general determination of resistance will take place & … the fair example of Spain will be followed by other powers. You will then see that overgrown Empire of France fall to pieces in a far shorter time than it was erected.
Major Alexander Gordon
If Boney had been there we should have been beaten.
Wellington
By mid-January 1810, Napoleon had massed 324,996 troops in Spain and ordered his marshals to launch knock-out blows against the remaining resistance.1 On paper this should not have been difficult. Spain’s largest army, about 20,000 men, defended the toehold of Cádiz, where the government now holed up. Three other fortresses, all in western Spain, held out – Badajoz, Cuidad Rodrigo, and Astorga. Elsewhere Spanish generals found remote refuges for their army’s remnants and tried to rebuild them. Although guerrilla bands wiped out ever more isolated French detachments, they could never drive the French from their land on their own.
The French would likely have crushed Spain this year had not the largest French army been siphoned off to invade Portugal. Marshal Andre Massena received orders in April 1810 to take command of three corps led by Generals Michael Ney, Jean Reynier, and Jean Junot deployed around Salamanca, and to lead this 68,000-man Army of Portugal to destroy Wellington. Massena reached Salamanca on May 28, and prepared for campaign.
Wellington anticipated a French invasion of Portugal in 1810. In assessing his chances of defending Portugal, he concluded: ‘I think that if the Portuguese do their duty, I shall have enough to maintain it; if they do not, nothing that Great Britain can afford can save the country.’2 He understood, of course, that Portugal’s fate depended on far more than this. He explained the interdependence of allied operations in Spain and Portugal, with defeats or victories in one country leading to likely defeats or victories in the other:
‘If they should be able to invade, and should not succeed in obliging us to evacuate the country, they will be in a very dangerous situation; and the longer we can oppose them … the more likely are they to suffer materially in Spain.’3
Wellington’s assessment was widely shared. Major Alexander Gordon expressed the prevailing pessimism about future operations:
Lord Wellington has undertaken to defend against the approaching invasion of the Enemy … We may protract the war for a few months, but it is I think impossible to hinder Portugal from eventually falling. And although this move of Lord Wellington’s is most unpopular in the army, I … think he could not … do otherwise. Portugal is fully committed with the cause of Britain … We have put arms in the hands of the people, we have taken upon ourselves the management of her Government, her Army, her defense; we cannot desert her in danger, we must sacrifice ourselves for her.4
Wellington counted on four layers of defense. The first included the Spanish fortresses of Cuidad Rodrigo and Badajoz. If these capitulated the defense fell back to the corresponding Portuguese fortresses of Almeida and Elvas. If the French took these, Wellington planned to defend the mountains astride the invasion route, ideally at the fortress of Abrantes. Finally, if the French broke through, Wellington would withdraw his army within the fortified Lines of Torres Vedras running from Alhandra on the Tagus River upstream of Lisbon to where the Zizandre River flows into the Atlantic Ocean. The previous October, he had ordered 23,000 Portuguese militia to construct and garrison what became 53 miles of forts, redoubts, and entrenchments in two parallel lines with the front 29 miles and rear 22 miles long. Royal Navy warships bristling with 24-and 18-pounder cannons guarded each flank. A series of hilltop posts could convey semaphore messages from one end of the line to the other in 7 minutes. Wellesley would reach this sanctuary leaving nothing but scorched earth behind.5
Wellington’s field army numbered 24,796 British and 24,649 Portuguese troops in 5 line divisions, the Light Division, and the cavalry division. Each division included two British brigades and one Portuguese brigade. Generals Brent Spencer, Rowland Hill, Thomas Picton, Lowry Cole, and James Leith led the line divisions, General Robert Craufurd the Light Division, and Stapleton Cotton the cavalry division. General William Beresford’s 5,000-man Portuguese division was detached to guard the frontier south of the Tagus River, although Wellington recalled him after the French invasion. In addition, around 25,000 militia were deployed in detachments at strategic spots around the rest of the country. It was mostly the militia that destroyed anything of military value that refugees could not cart or herd beyond the advancing French army.6
If his number of troops generally satisfied Wellington, their quality troubled him: ‘I have … terrible disadvantages to contend with. The army was, and indeed is, the worst British army that was ever sent from England. Then, between ourselves, the spirit of party … prevails here … There is a despondency among some; a want of confidence in their own exertions, an extravagant notion of the power and resources of the French, and a distaste for the war in the Peninsula, which sentiments have been created and are kept up by a correspondence with England, even with Ministers and those connected with them.’7
Indeed, the prime minister and many other Britons feared the worst. War Secretary Robert Jenkinson, Lord Liverpool informed Wellington ‘that a considerable amount of alarm exists within this country respecting the safety of the British army’ and ‘you would rather be excused for removing the army … than by remaining in Portugal too long.’8 The Cabinet debated whether Lisbon was actually worth defending, and mulled concentrating their forces to defend Cádiz.
A lesser general might have seized this excuse to cut and run, and thus would have drastically shifted the course of history. Wellington was made of sterner stuff. He reassured Liverpool that ‘I am perfectly aware of the risks that I incur … All I beg is that if I am to be responsible, I may be left to the exercise of my own judgment, and I ask for the confidence of Government upon the measures which I am to adopt.’9 He explained that the ability to defend Cádiz and ultimately drive the French from Spain depended on the ability to defend and drive the French from Portugal, and vice versa; likewise, France’s conquest of one realm would lead to the other’s conquest: ‘As long as we shall remain in a state of activity in Portugal, the contest must continue in Spain … The French are most desirous that we should withdraw from the country.’10
Massena launched his campaign in late May. Ney spearheaded the advance, and by May 30 reached the first objective, Cuidad Rodrigo. It took nearly four weeks to zigzag siege parallels forward enough for French batteries to open fire on June 25. Cuidad Rodrigo’s 4,000-man garrison surrendered on July 9. Massena’s losses were light, about 500 casualties and were easily replaced. What he could not replace was time – the Spanish had held up the French advance for six crucial weeks. Throughout the siege, Wellington resisted pressure to march to the fortress’s relief. He admitted that ‘however unreasonable it may appear … the people of Spain are by no means satisfied that His Majesty’s troops have taken so active a share … in the war as might have been expected from them.’11
As Massena consolidated his victory, he sent Ney west to invest Almeida, just a day’s march away. Wellington dispatched General Robert Craufurd’s Light Division to probe Ney at the Coa River, a mile west of Almeida. Unfortunately, Craufurd committed a fundamental military error when he crossed the bridge and deployed his troops with an unfordable river behind them. Ney detached a division and hurled it against Craufurd on July 24. The Light Division fought valiantly against overwhelming odds, then, during a lull, streamed across the narrow bridge to safety, suffering 36 killed, 189 wounded, and 83 missing, while inflicting 117 dead and 404 wounded on the French.12
Colonel William Cox commanded 4,500 Portuguese troops defending Almeida. They had held out for over a month when a freak accident forced them to surrender on August 27. The previous day a leaking gunpowder keg left a trail as soldiers carried it from the magazine to one of the bastions. A stray spark ignited the trail which fizzled rapidly back to the magazine and detonated the scores of gunpowder barrels packed within. The explosion killed or mangled about 500 men and stunned the survivors.
Once again, Massena won a relatively inexpensive victory, having suffered only about 400 casualties. And once again his most significant loss was time. The two sieges consumed the entire summer. Massena hurried his troops toward Wellington’s advance guard, which withdrew as they neared. With reinforcements Massena now had 65,000 troops, with 3,500 detached and split to garrison Cuidad Rodrigo and Almeida.
Wellington halted his 52,000 troops and deployed it along 10 miles of the Bussaco mountain range that ran north from the Mondego River. Two switch-backing roads traversed the range along his line, with one on the center and the other on the left flank; both led to Coimbra, a dozen miles west in the coastal lowlands.
Massena deployed his army along the foot of these mountains on September 26. After scanning the ridgeline, he ordered Ney and Reynier to attack, respectively, up the roads at dawn the next morning. The result was slaughter as the defenders poured volleys into the troops struggling up the slope, then launched short charges with bayonets lowered to rout the survivors:
The instant the attacking columns were turned back, they were exposed to the fire of our whole division; whilst our battalion and some cazadores were ordered to pursue, and to give them a flanking fire, and the horse artillery continued to pour on them a murderous fire of grape. [They were] trampling each other to death in their great haste to escape.13
During the battle, Wellington and his staff cantered along the line to whichever French attack seemed the most menacing. Wellington issued orders ‘in a loud voice … short and precise’ with ‘nothing of the bombastic pomp of the commander-in-chief surrounded by his glittering staff. He wears … simply a low plain hat, a white collar, a grey overcoat, and a light sword.’14 After 3 hours of fruitless bloodbath, Massena called off the attacks without committing Junot’s corps or divisions of Ney or Reynier held in reserve. The French lost 4,473 troops, including 535 dead. The British and Portuguese each suffered exactly 626 casualties, bringing their total to 1,252 men.15
Only then did Massena bother to send cavalry squadrons northward to search for an undefended pass around the allied line. When a courier galloped back with word that his detachment had scattered militia at Sardao Pass, Massena hurried his army there. The pass was lightly defended through no fault of Wellington’s. He had ordered Colonel Nicholas Trant to plug it with his Portuguese light infantry regiment, but somehow the orders never reached him in time.
Learning of Massena’s advance, Wellington withdrew his army through Coimbra to the Torres Vedras Line. Massena followed hard on his heels, leaving his wounded and supplies in Coimbra. Trant, meanwhile, withdrew his regiment and several thousand militia north. On October 7, Trant led his men in a lightening advance against Coimbra, overwhelmed the defenders, and captured 4,500 French and a caravan of supplies critical for Massena’s army. He then withdrew with his spoils to Oporto.
Massena drew up his army before a central swath of the Torres Vedras Line on October 11, and pondered what to do. Before him was a daunting array of earthen forts and redoubts, studded with sharpened logs, surrounded by deep ditches, and packed with enemy troops, cannons, and provisions. His army was exhausted and diminished by disease and battle. In all, he now had 10,000 fewer men than before Bussaco, while Wellington had 10,000 more. The winter rains began and turned trenches, camps, and roads into churned quagmires. He lingered a month in indecision as the weather, supplies, and morale worsened.
During this time, Wellington chose not to attack his dwindling enemy. He explained to Liverpool that ‘if I should succeed in forcing Massena’s position, it would become a question whether I should be able to maintain my own, in case the enemy should march another army into this country.’ This possible future threat aside, Wellington faced a more immediate problem: ‘I observe how small the superiority of numbers is in my favour, and know that the position will be in favor of the enemy. I cannot but be of opinion that I act in conformity with the instructions and intentions of His Majesty’s government, in … incurring no extraordinary risk.’16
Massena sent back his sick and cavalry to Santarem, then led the rest of his army there on November 14. Wellington gingerly followed a week later. He was astonished that:
… the enemy have been able to remain in this country so long; and it is an extraordinary instance of what a French army can do [since] … they brought no provisions with them … With all our money, and having in our favour the good inclinations of the country, I assure you that I could not maintain one division in the district in which they have maintained not yet less than 60,000 men and 20,000 animals for more than two months.17 Evidently the allies had not ‘scorched’ the entire ‘earth’ accessible to French foragers.
At Santarem Massena received reinforcements and supplies, most notably General Jean Baptiste Drouet, comte D’Erlon’s 11,000-man corps. But even then Massena prudently was no more eager to attack Wellington than Wellington was to attack him. So the stalemate dragged on dreary month after month until Massena finally abandoned Santarem on March 4 and withdrew to Celerico, shadowed by Wellington.
When Massena turned his army south toward the Tagus valley, Wellington’s Light Division, now commanded by General William Erskine, caught up to Reynier’s corps at Sabugal on the Coa River, and attacked on April 3. Fog and intermittent rain fouled eye-sights and muskets. Commanders were uncertain just where the enemy was until they marched or rode right before them. Then victory mostly went to the more numerous side that most savagely thrust bayonets or swung sabers. The British routed the French, and inflicted 760 casualties while suffering 179.18
Massena hastily retreated with his surviving 44,000 troops and reached his supply depot at Salamanca on April 11, finally ending a campaign that began eleven months earlier. In all, the French suffered about 25,000 casualties, including 2,000 killed in battle, 8,000 prisoners, and 15,000 who perished from disease and starvation. The allies lost only about half as many. Wellington’s scorched earth strategy inflicted devastating losses, and not just on the French. Perhaps as many as 50,000 Portuguese died from starvation, disease, and exposure over the winter.19
Wellington’s campaign was decisive in that he drove the invader from Portugal, aside from a French garrison in Almeida. Yet, could he have done more? Neither Wellington nor Massena was ever powerful enough to crush the other. Death, desertion, and reinforcements caused each army’s troop numbers constantly to seesaw with the other, but the general power balance prevailed. Although Wellington won a large-scale battle at Bussaco and a small-scale battle at Sabugal, he lacked the manpower to turn either into a crushing victory. So Wellington never pondered such a possibility. Instead he was obsessed with denying Massena any opportunity to crush him. Aside from his disastrous attack at Bussaco, Massena was just as cautious. The result was a stalemate decided not by battle, but by who suffered the worst attrition of troops, supplies, and morale.
Some prominent British politicians and newspaper editors criticized Wellington for not destroying Massena. Word of the criticism of their chief and, by extension, themselves, angered the soldiers. Major Gordon condemned:
… the language of the people with regard to Lord Wellington … [as] … infamous & one cannot but deplore to what a length the liberty of the Press has arrived. People now are not satisfied because Lord Wellington has not utterly destroyed Massena and his army … Yet these same people some months ago declared that nothing was equal to [his] rashness … in attempting even to defend this country, that it was useless even to attempt to resist Massena and his army.20
As Wellington drove off one threat, another loomed that had been a long time steadily building. On December 31, 1810, Marshal Nicolas Soult marched north with 20,000 troops from Seville to clear the border of Spanish forces and possibly link with Massena. He forced 4,161 Spanish troops to surrender Olivenza on January 23, 1811. When General Francisco Ballesteros neared within a day’s march, Soult dispatched a division that routed him at Villanueva de los Castillejos back into Portugal. Soult opened a siege of Badajoz on January 27. General Gabriel Mendizabal advanced with 15,000 troops, drove off the French on the Guadiana River’s north side, and sent 4,000 troops across the bridge into Badajoz on the south side, bringing its garrison to 7,000 defenders, then withdrew to a ridgeline. Soult could never take Badajoz as long as Mendizabal dominated the north bank and supplied the city. On the night of February 18, Soult’s engineers constructed a pontoon bridge across the river a few miles upstream, and sent 7,500 to outflank and rout Mendizabal. Badajoz’s garrison surrendered on March 11; in all the Spaniards suffered 1,851 killed and 8,980 captured.21
Soult had fought a masterly campaign. Over 2½ months, his men had inflicted 20,000 Spanish casualties while losing one-fifth that number, and captured the minor fortress of Olivenza and the major fortress of Badajoz. The brilliance of Soult’s campaign contrasted with the ineptitude of the Spanish generals and soldiers that opposed him. This provoked Wellington to quip that the string of humiliating defeats ‘would certainly have been avoided had the Spaniards been anything but Spaniards.’22
The campaign’s next phase was for Soult to march north, join forces with Massena, and overwhelm Wellington. But word of a French defeat near Cádiz and a march by Ballesteros against Seville forced Soult to leave General Adolphe Mortier with 11,000 troops at Badajoz and hurry south with rest of his army.
The French siege of Cádiz opened in February 1810 and ground on for a year with no end in sight. The stalemate persisted not just because the defenders outnumbered the besiegers. Within Cádiz were 21,000 Spanish troops led by General Manuel de la Pena and 5,000 British and Portuguese troops led by General Thomas Graham, while Marshal Claude Victor commanded the 19,000 French deployed in the countryside. There was no chance of a battle. Since Cádiz crowned an island, the French could not assault the city even if their artillery breached the thick walls, and for the same reason the defenders could not massively attack the besiegers. At most, skirmishes erupted when the Spanish launched sorties from their redoubts on the mainland defending approaches to Cádiz. Nor could the French starve out the defenders since a powerful Royal Navy squadron kept the sea lanes open. Although the French could not take Cádiz, their artillery fire systematically destroyed the city while their very presence insulted Spanish pride.
Graham conceived a bold plan to break the siege and talked Pena into reluctantly joining him in carrying it out. They would embark Graham’s 5,000 troops and 8,000 of Pena’s on ships, leaving 13,000 troops to defend Cádiz, sail to Algeciras, land, then march against Victor’s rear. They disembarked at Algeciras on March 1. The following day, with Graham’s troops leading, the allies headed toward Cádiz, 60 miles away. Learning of the landing, Victor hurried 10,000 troops and deployed them across the road at Barrosa on March 5. Victor ordered his men to attack as Graham’s division deployed before them. As the battle raged, Graham galloped off couriers with pleas to Pena to hurry his troops forward in support. By the time the Spanish arrived, Graham’s men had driven off the French, inflicting 2,400 casualties while suffering 1,740. An emboldened Pena then urged Graham to pursue the French back to Cádiz. But with thinned ranks, empty cartridge boxes, and hundreds of wounded, Graham could not immediately follow up his victory. This deflated Pena’s enthusiasm. The following day, the allies headed back to Algeciras.23
Wellington, meanwhile, learning of Soult’s siege of Badajoz, dispatched General Beresford to join Spanish troops in opposing him. Concerned that Beresford’s force was not large enough, Wellington hurried General Cole’s division after him. Finally, worried that Beresford might not be able to defeat Soult, Wellington left General Spencer in command, and cantered south with his staff and a cavalry escort on April 16.
By now, Soult had marched south to defend Seville, leaving Mortier behind. Mortier captured the small fortress of Campo Mayor, 10 miles north of Badajoz. Beresford’s advanced guard surprised and routed Mortier’s troops outside Campo Mayor on March 25. Beresford, however, did not follow this up with a massive attack despite outnumbering Mortier by 18,000 to 11,000 troops. The battle seesawed as each commander fed in his reserves to counter the other’s threatening advances. Facing overwhelming odds, Mortier finally withdrew into Badajoz. There he received orders to transfer his command to General Fay Latour-Maubourg, who garrisoned Badajoz with 3,000 troops and withdrew south to Olivenza. With reinforcements Beresford had 27,000 troops when his army surrounded and besieged Badajoz on May 6.
Massena, meanwhile, replenished his ranks and supplies at Salamanca then advanced to break the British siege of Cuidad Rodrigo. Learning of Massena’s advance, Wellington promptly raced north, reached Almeida on April 29, then spent several days searching the region for the best site to defend. He finally decided to defy Massena a dozen miles west of Cuidad Rodrigo on a ridgeline behind the shallow Dos Casar River and overlooking the village of Fuentes de Oñoro.
When Massena appeared on May 3, his army outnumbered Wellington’s by 48,268 to 37,614 troops (23,026 British, 11,471 Portuguese), but for lack of draft animals was outgunned in cannons by 38 to 48.24 By early afternoon, he deployed his army and decided on a plan. Massena’s tactics could not have been more unimaginative – he tried to steamroll Wellington’s army with a series of piecemeal, direct assaults. He hurled a division against Fuentes de Oñoro then watched dismayed as enemy musket volleys and canister shot decimated it. He ordered a second division to march into that maelstrom. This time the French took the village, but only after suffering devastating losses. Wellington ordered a counterattack that retook the village, pursued the routed French infantry, and then formed squares to repel French cavalry attacks. In all the battle for the village cost the French and the allies 652 and 259 casualties, respectively. Fog gathered that night and blanketed the battlefield the next morning. As the sun slowly burned off the fog, each side waited for the other’s attack. Massena sent cavalry to probe for a way around the enemy’s right flank, but the allies repelled them. The enemy commanders agreed on a truce to remove the wounded between their lines.
The battle resumed on May 5, when Massena launched an assault of infantry, cavalry, and artillery against Wellington’s right. The allied line was about to break when Wellington threw in General Craufurd’s Light Division. Craufurd’s men drove off the French infantry then formed squares as the French cavalry charged. Wellington ordered General Cotton to rescue them. As the British and French cavalry battled, Craufurd withdrew his troops to the allied line. Massena then sent 22,000 troops against Wellington’s army, which repelled it with severe losses. Massena hurled 10,000 reserves against Fuentes de Oñoro. After savage fighting, the French took the village, only to be driven off by a British counterattack. Massena massed his artillery and again sent forward his exhausted troops. When the allies drove the French infantry back, the French guns bombarded the exposed British and Portuguese troops. As Wellington withdrew his troops behind the ridge, he cantered batteries to the ridgeline where they bombarded and finally silenced the enemy cannons. Each side spent the next day readying his position for an attack that never came. Massena tried to arc his cavalry around Wellington’s right but the British infantry and cavalry repelled them.
The waiting game ended on May 10, when Massena withdrew his army on the long road back to Salamanca, leaving Cuidad Rodrigo to its fate. In all, the French suffered 2,844 casualties and the allies 1,711.25 The heaps of dead and dying were especially thick in the village, where the fighting was hand-to-hand: ‘Among the dead that covered the street … it was quite … common … to see an English and a French soldier with their bayonets still in each other’s bodies, and their fists convulsively grasping the butt ends of their muskets, lying on top of each other.’26 Although Wellington had once again defeated Massena, he was anything but exultant. Instead he noted grimly: ‘If Boney had been there we should have been beaten.’27
The latest French threat came from the south. Soult routed Ballesteros’s advance toward Seville, gathered reinforcements, and marched north to rescue Badajoz. Beresford’s siege was not going well. His supplies were dwindling, he had lost around 500 troops including most of his engineers in various sorties and bombardments, and his lines were still far from pounding range of the city’s walls.
Learning of Soult’s approach, Beresford marched 20,310 men, including 8,738 British and 9,131 Portuguese infantry, and 1,995 cavalry, and 446 artillerymen, 20 miles south and deployed them behind a shallow stream straddled by the village of Albuera. There he was joined by 14,644 Spanish troops, including 12,593 infantry, 1,886 cavalry, and 165 gunners jointly led by Generals Joaquin Blake and Francisco Castanos. The allied army numbered 34,954 troops. Soult’s army of 24,260 troops, including 19,015 infantry, 4,012 cavalry, and 1,233 artillerymen, marched into view on the afternoon of May 15.28
Although grossly outnumbered by the enemy in a strong position, Soult ordered a massive attack the following morning on the Spanish troops on the allied right. As that flank crumbled, General William Steward diverted much of his division against the French attack and blunted it. Soult arched his cavalry around the Spanish and routed them. Beresford charged his cavalry against the French and drove them off, then sent Cole’s division against Soult’s center at Albuera. Although Cole’s men captured Albuera, they could not advance beyond. A cartridge-soaking rain ended the battle. The enemies suffered nearly equal numbers of casualties, the French 5,936 and the allies 5,956, including 4,199 British, 389 Portuguese, and 1,368 Spanish. But Soult lost nearly one-quarter of his army to the allied loss of less than one-fifth. Severely outnumbered, Soult withdrew the next day to Badajoz.29
The allied failure to capitalize on their superior troop numbers and crush Soult provoked heated recriminations. As usual, the redcoats expressed contempt and loathing for the people they were sent to save. A sergeant condemned the ‘Spaniards’ who ‘soon gave way in great disorder, leaving the brunt of the battle to the British … It was always a bother to get them to stir forward during a battle, but retreating was what they were best at, and then it was always in confusion.’30 Major Gordon blistered a British general: ‘The Battle of Albuera was certainly gained by Cole’s division but it was entirely owing to the gallantry of his men, and not to any merit of his … Cole has no more head than a Child, is quite lost, and confused, and without the least confidence in himself.’31 Beresford’s account of the battle dismayed Wellington who replied: ‘This won’t do – write me down a victory.’32 Privately, Wellington was scathing of how Beresford and his staff handled the battle: ‘They were never determined to fight it; they did not occupy the ground as they ought; they were ready to run away at every moment from the time it commenced till the French retired.’33
With Massena and Soult now far away, Wellington ordered resumptions of the sieges of Cuidad Rodrigo and Badajoz, and personally took command of the latter. Auguste Marmont relieved Massena of his army’s command at Salamanca. Soult replenished his army at Seville. Couriers raced between Marmont and Soult as they distantly worked out a campaign to relieve Badajoz. With 35,000 troops Marmont marched first to Cuidad Rodrigo. Outnumbered, Spencer broke off his siege and withdrew to Almeida. When Marmont approached Almeida, Spencer abandoned that fortress and hurried south to join Wellington at Badajoz.
Perched high on a mesa surrounded by rocky ground and on the Guadiana River’s south bank, Badajoz was extremely difficult to besiege. San Christobal fortress on the north bank protected the bridge across the river. Although the British began digging siege lines against Badajoz and San Christobal on May 29, neither was making much progress. Word arrived of the convergence of Marmont and Massena toward Badajoz. Wellington ordered night assaults on San Christobal on June 6 and 9, but the French repulsed each. The fighting was especially hellish for the British:
We advanced up the glacis … The top of this wall crowded with men hurling down shells and hand grenades … Add to this some half a dozen cannon scouring the trench with grape … heaps of brave fellows killed and wounded, ladders shot to pieces and falling together with the men down upon the living and the dead … But in the midst of all these difficulties … we should have taken the fort, but for an unforeseen accident … The ladders were too short … as soon as this was discovered … the order was given to retire.34
Wellington ended the siege on June 10, and deployed his army in line on ridgelines anchored by Elvas and Campo Mayor.
Soult and Marmont joined forces at Merida on June 18, then advanced with their 60,000 troops to Badajoz. There they ended their advance even though they outnumbered Wellington’s 44,000-man army. After resupplying Badajoz, Massena and Soult withdrew to their respective bases of Salamanca and Seville. Soult hastened his march after learning that Spanish General Blake was marching against Seville. Blake withdrew to Portugal as Soult neared and barely escaped destruction as he embarked with his men aboard British transports that sailed for Cádiz.
Wellington abandoned any notion of successfully besieging Badajoz. Instead he led most of his army back to invest Cuidad Rodrigo. This prompted Marmont to advance and reunite before Cuidad Rodrigo with General Jean Dorsenne who arrived with 20,000 troops from Astorga. Once again Wellington broke off a siege before superior numbers and withdrew into Portugal.
The advanced French guard caught up and attacked Wellington’s rear guard at El Bodon. The British formed squares to repel French cavalry attacks:
… until, at last the French infantry being brought up, we were ordered to retreat in squares … The French cavalry … rushed furiously … but they halted and we repulsed them with the utmost steadiness and gallantry. The French suffered severely … We were much annoyed by shot and shell from the heights where the French artillery were posted, some … falling in the squares … killing and wounding several of our men, and blowing up our ammunition. We had about six miles to retreat … before we reached the body of the army, with the French cavalry hanging on our flanks and rear.35
The next day, on September 25, Wellington deployed his army along a ridgeline above Fuenteguinaldo. When Marmont approached on September 27, Wellington withdrew that night to a stronger position further west. Marmont scanned Wellington’s line and decided that any attack would only fail with senseless slaughter. Marmont and Dorsenne withdrew their men to their respective bases.
While this ended Wellington’s operations for the year, General Hill launched a small campaign. On October 22, he led his 11,000-man division toward Merida to disrupt the main road linking Salamanca and Seville. Although Hill did not get that far, he wiped out a 2,500-man French detachment at Arroyo Molinos, mopped up another 800 French scattered in posts on his route, then returned to Portugal having suffered only a hundred casualties.36
Wellington’s series of victories over French armies in 1810 and 1811 transformed perceptions of the Peninsular War by most politicians, newspaper editors, and the public from pessimism to optimism. Foreign Secretary Wellesley expressed the new outlook: ‘The wisdom of maintaining the war in Spain and Portugal has been fully proved by the shade it has cast on the military and political character of Bonaparte.’37 Certainly Wellington and his staff saw the Peninsula campaign in a broad strategic vision that embraced the rest of Europe. Major Gordon captured his vision: ‘Depend upon it, sooner or later this general determination of resistance will take place & … the fair example of Spain will be followed by other powers. You will then see that overgrown Empire of France fall to pieces in a far shorter time than it was erected.’38 Gordon’s vision was prescient.