The Making Of The British Army (28 page)

BOOK: The Making Of The British Army
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But in a later stanza Wolfe hints at what might have befallen Moore’s reputation had he not died in battle:

Lightly they’ll talk of the spirit that’s gone,
And o’er his cold ashes upbraid him—
But little he’ll reck, if they let him sleep on
In the grave where a Briton has laid him.

 

The upbraiding had already begun, indeed, before the fate of the army – or even its predicament – was known in England. ‘The truth is that we have retreated before a rumour – an uncertain speculation – and Moore knows it,’ Canning complained: ‘O that we had an enterprising general with a reputation to make instead of one to save!’
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Most believed this to be unfair, especially since there was more than a suspicion of prejudice against Moore, the ‘Whig general’. Even the arch-Tory Castlereagh spoke up for him.

But the army took note of the criticism. The fickleness of political support was at once evident to its senior officers, as were the hazards of using military force for political rather than strictly military purposes. The Spanish, until lately allies of France, had not proved themselves trustworthy allies of His Majesty, though their loathing of the invader Napoleon was evident enough. The perils of operating over difficult terrain and long distances without proper lines of communication had been hammered home, though the potential of the Royal Navy as a ‘strategic multiplier’ was again plain to see. Equally plain was the fragility of discipline in the instrument with which Moore’s successor would have to finish the job. The army’s organization was hopelessly ad hoc, its generals were dangerously recalcitrant, its rank and file (‘the scum of the earth’) reverted to type as soon as the wind blew unfavourably, and the regimental officers in too many cases were unable or unwilling to do their duty – or perhaps simply ignorant of what it was. These were the cautionary lessons of Moore’s campaign; and Sir Arthur Wellesley was taking careful note.

And yet, when the order ‘take post’ was given, no matter what the circumstances, there were brigadiers and major-generals accomplished enough in mustering their brigades and divisions, and regimental officers who set a standard of courage that no army in Europe could
better. And, of course, the ‘scum of the earth’ could fight with a faithful tenacity that moved men to tears. This, then, was the tricky, cranky, erratic but potentially magnificent instrument that was now placed in the hands of the only man in Britain with the qualities of character and the experience of war to replace Sir John Moore. Wellesley was now recalled from Ireland once more and told to take the army back to Portugal. Wellesley had admired Moore; he had offered his service to him the year before: ‘you are the man, and I shall with great willingness act under you’. He had studied the Corunna campaign, and in doing so had developed decided views – views that would in time, slowly but very surely, take the army over the Pyrenees and into France. And so in its way the Corunna campaign was a prelude to eventual victory over Napoleon as significant as Dunkirk to VE Day. The stage was now set for perhaps the greatest trial in the making of the British army, a trial in which the steel would be further tempered and the weapon forged in a shape that would alter little in the best part of a century – and which would indeed be recognizable two whole centuries later.

The Spanish Ulcer
The Peninsula, 1809–14
 

THE STATE OF SIR JOHN MOORE’S MEN AS THEY LANDED PIECEMEAL ALONG
the south coast of England shocked civilians and soldiers alike. Storms had scattered the transports the length of the Channel; as a result, for days on end the able-bodied and sick alike tramped the roads for miles to the regimental depots. Edward Costello, just enlisted in the 95th, watched the arrival of his new regiment at their barracks in Hythe:

The appearance of the men was squalid and miserable in the extreme. There was scarcely a man amongst them who had not lost some of his appointments, and many, owing to the horrors of that celebrated retreat, were even without rifles. Their clothing too was in tatters, and in such an absolute state of filth as to swarm with vermin. New clothing was immediately served out and the old ordered to be burnt.

 

With reports of the returning troops in such a condition, and of the indifferent support from their supposed allies the Spanish, His Majesty’s ministers might have recoiled from sending more troops to the Peninsula. But most of them, whatever their private misgivings, still maintained a show of public confidence: ‘The British army’, wrote Canning to his representative in Madrid, ‘will decline no difficulty, it will shrink from no danger, when through that difficulty and danger
the commander is enabled to see his way to some definite purpose.’ And there were still 7,000 British troops in the Lisbon garrison, along with a few thousand Portuguese who might pass for an army: they too would have to be evacuated if they were not reinforced. Besides, Britain could hardly abandon Portugal, having convoyed its royal family to Brazil and appropriated its navy.

But with the French ranging in Spain, could Portugal be defended? Sir John Moore had thought not. Sir Arthur Wellesley believed otherwise. He now laid out the situation in a memorandum to his old friend Castlereagh, the secretary for war, concluding that Portugal could indeed be defended ‘whatever might be the result of the contest in Spain’
if
Britain put an army there of no fewer than 30,000, with plenty of cavalry and artillery ‘because the Portuguese establishment must necessarily be deficient in these two branches’; and
if the
Portuguese army were reorganized under British command; and
if its
every piece of uniform and equipment was sent from Britain. He took it for granted that the Royal Navy would retain command of the sea.

The memorandum, a model of strategic appreciation, did the trick: what remained of Moore’s army was reconstituted and reinforced, and Sir Arthur Wellesley, despite his lack of seniority and his recent if unmerited Cintra tarnish, was appointed to command. His brief was limited and circumscribed, however. The defence of Portugal was his primary mission; going on to the offensive in Spain was to be a matter for his judgement, but it was not to be done without the express consent of His Majesty’s government. He would in fact lose no time in going on to the offensive, however, for at this stage, before the French had time to consolidate their hold on the country, he was convinced that attack was the best means of defence.

Within three months of the evacuation of Corunna, Wellesley arrived in Lisbon and began reorganizing his new army to his own liking, forming divisions which could operate semi-independently (still something of an innovation), appointing British officers to commands at all levels in the Portuguese army and incorporating a Portuguese battalion into every British brigade. A fortnight later he was able to march north with 18,000 men to eject Moore’s oppressor Marshal Soult and his army from Oporto, Portugal’s second city and a strong centre of national resistance. He thought it prudent, however, to leave a strong garrison at Lisbon in case of a counter-stroke by a second French army under Marshal Victor in Castile, though this meant that his potentially
winning move – sending General Beresford, now a marshal of the Portuguese army, with 6,000 men to try to block Soult’s retreat – might fail for want of adequate strength.

On 12 May 1809, with a brilliant improvised crossing of the Douro led by the 3rd (East Kent) Regiment – ‘The Buffs’ – Wellesley retook Oporto. By the end of the month he had chased Soult out of Portugal, and although Beresford was not able to close the trap, the French had little option but to abandon most of their heavy equipment and run into wild Galicia. Here the Spanish partisans, the
guerrilleros –
the makers of ‘little war’ – received them most uncivilly. Goya’s paintbrush has recorded some of the tortures meted out to captured French troops – of which barn-door crucifixions were but the most symbolic – for the guerrillas practised simple terrorism. And such became the terror of the guerrillas, indeed, that thousands of French troops would have to be used to escort couriers and convoys throughout Spain.

By the middle of July Wellesley had cleared Galicia and made good progress towards Madrid, winning a famous if costly defensive victory at Talavera towards the end of the month, for which he was ennobled as Viscount Wellington. But he was finding it all but impossible to concert his actions with the Spanish, for their armies operated under no central direction. And when he learned that Napoleon was sending even more reinforcements (though the ‘emperor’ himself never set foot in Spain again) the new Lord Wellington withdrew with the bulk of his Anglo-Portuguese army back across the border, while the Spanish armies in Old Castile fell back on Cadiz, their provisional capital – each separately to await the renewed French offensive.

Leading the invasion of Portugal the following year would be the marshal whose military prowess Napoleon admired the most, André Masséna. But Wellington had been thinking ahead, and Masséna’s way to Lisbon would be barred by the biggest engineering effort of the entire war in Europe: the Lines of Torres Vedras, constructed at Wellington’s command and in large part laid out by him. And they were built at such speed and in such secrecy that when Masséna came upon them in October 1810 he angrily demanded why he had been told that the way to Lisbon lay wide open. ‘Wellington has had this made,’ was the reply, at which Masséna exploded: ‘Que diable! Il n’a pas construit ces montagnes!’

Wellington had not needed to throw up mountains: Estremadura, the region to the north of Lisbon, is hilly, mountainous even, as the
French knew well enough. What he had done was link the hills between the Atlantic and the estuary of the Tagus in a chain of blockhouses, redoubts and ravelins, using all the natural defensive features of the country. The first of his
three
formidable lines, some 35 miles northeast of Lisbon, and almost the same distance in length, ran through the town of Torres Vedras itself and covered every road and track to the capital, with a semaphore telegraph system operated by the Royal Navy which could send a message from one end to the other in eleven minutes. A second line, even stronger, was being built 6 miles to the south but was not complete until 1812, with a further, much shorter line, on the coast west of Lisbon to cover the embarkation beach if, like Sir John Moore, Wellington was forced to evacuate the army. The French only ever saw the first, however. For not only had the fortifications every impression of impregnability, Wellington withdrew the army into his fastness through a deep belt of ‘scorched earth’.
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As winter came on, Masséna’s army simply sickened and starved. In March 1811 they gave up altogether and slunk away to the border once more, leaving behind most of their transport and hundreds of hamstrung mules.

The Lines of Torres Vedras, built by Portuguese labourers under command of Lieutenant-Colonel Richard Fletcher of the Royal Engineers, cost £100,000. At £80 million in today’s prices (only half as much again as a single Eurofighter), they must rank as one of the most cost-effective items of defence expenditure in history – certainly since David’s sling.
65
And they set something of a benchmark for what the Royal Engineers might do on operations. But it was not just the economy of the undertaking, nor perhaps the secrecy nor even the stopping power of the Lines which imprinted itself on the minds of officers for generations to come: it was Wellington’s anticipation of the need for them. Indeed, when the army defined its doctrine of ‘battle procedure’ before the Second World War (the process by which a commander receives his orders, makes his reconnaissance and plan, issues his orders, prepares and deploys his troops and executes his mission), one of the four principles upon which the
procedure was based was ‘intelligent anticipation of future tasks’.

The notion of a reserve position, a bastion, a firm base into which a force could withdraw when the situation beyond turned unfavourable, was hardly new: every castle in Europe owed its construction in part to that principle. But the Lines of Torres Vedras, including the protected embarkation beach, were something more: they gave Wellington ‘balance’, allowing him a greater opportunity for boldness than he might otherwise have had. Nothing quite like it was ever achieved again, although the idea was certainly strong in the minds of the desert generals of the Second World War: El Alamein was first an ‘impassable’ defensive line, dug, mined and wired as a
ne plus ultra
to protect Cairo, before it became the springboard for the British army’s greatest offensive battle honour of all time.

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