Wellington’s Engineers: Military Engineering on the Peninsular War 1808-1814 (33 page)

The lack of complaint by Wright about Wellington’s treatment of English in what was essentially a private letter to Burgoyne, would suggest that he thought Wellington was correct. The replacement of Captain English by Captain Green, exactly as Goldfinch had predicted, would have caused Elphinstone great concern. Wright appears to have been liked by Wellington, saying ‘he used to send for me almost every day and he always appeared to me a very reasonable kind of man; he was never violent except when I think he ought to have been’.
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Once more, Wellington was lucky. The French made no serious attempt to attack his exposed force before the bridge was replaced. The bridging attempts over the past two weeks all appear rushed and took great risks that a force could be stranded without support. Soult was close by and could rapidly descend on any isolated forces. Operationally, it is difficult to see what the hurry was and Wellington tended to be cautious. One wonders whether there was a political element to his manoeuvring in that he wanted southern France under his control to exert more pressure on Napoleon and strengthen the bargaining position of the British government?

Having got his whole army across, Wellington immediately moved on Toulouse where the final battle of the Peninsular War was fought on 10 April. The following day, earthworks were started round the city to closely blockade it, Lieutenant Reid remarking that he had been ordered to build several redoubts, the troops being given ‘positive orders never to abandon them’.
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On 12 April, Wellington entered Toulouse, Soult having withdrawn the night before. News of Napoleon’s abdication arrived that night. The account of the final military action of the war now needs to be completed.

The Blockade of Bayonne

Whilst the bridge of boats across the Adour was being completed, Hope realised that the French were building extensive field works around the citadel on the northern bank and after a sharp struggle pushed them back into the fortress. As described above, Wellington had asked for plans to besiege and attack the citadel. Having received the updated plan from Elphinstone on 4 March 1814, he now issued his typically detailed orders for collecting the stores for the siege. He planned to use St Jean de Luz and the river Adour to bring up the engineering stores.

Wellington continued to complain to Hope that Elphinstone’s estimates for the men required were excessive. He had asked for 15,000 men to be made available. The working party was to be 3,000 strong with a further 2,000 for the covering party with three shift changes a day. Wellington asked Hope to ‘converse’ with Elphinstone, adding ‘if we are to have 15,000 men for the attack of the Citadel, I am apprehensive that we must give up our plan’.
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Writing a few days later, he said ‘Elphinstone, like other engineers, has called for more men than he wants, or can employ, and the loss would be enormous if so many men were placed in such a small place’.
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Wellington then added a detailed breakdown of his estimation of how many troops would be required, it being about half of Elphinstone’s estimate. To be fair, Elphinstone’s breakdown clearly stated where the troops were to be used and it covered all possibilities. In most cases, where Wellington reduced the number, Elphinstone would have done the same once he received clarification of the scope of the task, one example being the provision of troops to unload the supply boats, which Wellington struck out because he would expect that to be dealt with by others. This was the first siege Elphinstone had worked on and he would have been less familiar with the working practices that had developed over the past three years.

Seventy guns were selected for the attack and these with the necessary ammunition were slowly moved forward using 700 artillery horses. Hope seemed to be in no hurry to start the siege, however, being content to continue blockading the place. By 13 April, the artillery, ammunition and 670 gunners were in the artillery park in front of the Citadel. The French garrison, which was both strong and well-supplied, launched an attack on the morning of the 14th and caught the Allies unprepared. Sappers who were with the French attack immediately started filling in the trenches. In the confusion General Hay was killed and Sir John Hope captured and there were several hundred casualties on each side. This attack was completely unnecessary as both the Allies and the French had received word of the abdication of Napoleon. On 28 April, Elphinstone reported to his wife ‘that the white flag was hoisted at noon in Bayonne’. With this action, the Peninsular War came to an end.

Disappointingly, the final months of the war did little to enhance the reputation of the Corps of Royal Engineers with Wellington. Elphinstone did nothing to build a relationship with his commander, and the problems crossing various rivers including the Garonne could have been catastrophic. There is a little twist in the tale of Commanding Royal Engineers in the war in that on 4 March 1814, the Board of Ordnance awarded command pay to Burgoyne as CRE of the separate corps under Sir John Hope, Elphinstone being with Headquarters to the right.
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Today, it is not clear what they thought Elphinstone was doing. Burgoyne, was also strangely silent on the matter.

It is difficult to understand why Wellington tolerated Elphinstone’s behaviour. I can only assume that he felt the war was pretty much over by the time he arrived on the scene. It was the right decision to leave Elphinstone for the siege of Bayonne as strategically this is where the engineers could do the most good. With the end of the war, Elphinstone went home as soon as he could, never to venture abroad again. The commanding engineers for the American and Waterloo campaigns were both junior to Elphinstone and both had served in the Peninsula under Wellington.

When you started reading this book, you might have thought that Wellington did not really need many engineers, as they were only used for sieges and there were not many those in the campaign. Whilst this book is primarily about the Royal Engineers, it is actually about the rise of ‘Scientific Soldiers’ and the military’s recognition that they were needed. The establishment of the Royal Military Academy in the eighteenth century and the Royal Military College at the beginning of the nineteenth century began the trend that led to the professional military that we expect today. The basic skills that were taught to the Ordnance officers were not very different from what was taught to staff officers during the Napoleonic Wars.

You will have a better insight now into how well embedded the ‘Scientific Soldiers’ were into almost every aspect of military operations. When you read a book that says General X advanced to Y, think again. Before General X could make that decision, someone had prepared a map and someone else had probably made a reconnaissance up the road to town Y. When the book says General X threw a bridge across the river, think about the planning to get the bridge there, the surveying of the selected location, the consideration of the weather conditions and the building of the bridge. When General X starts his siege with numerous siege guns, who has done the planning to move hundreds of tons of equipment to the selected location? Behind every great general there is a great backroom team.

The British army in the early nineteenth century was still not convinced of the need for ‘Scientific Soldiers’. It had managed for many years just hiring expertise when it needed it. An army officer learnt his trade ‘on the job’, which could be a brutal, Darwinian process. What he learnt was very dependent on the interests of his commanding officer. The Board of Ordnance had realised in the middle of the eighteenth century that artillery and, subsequently, engineer officers needed a proper military education. The army was slowly following. The British army started the Peninsular War with specialist services spread across two separate Corps in the Board of Ordnance (RE and RSM), a third in the Army (RSC) and a miscellaneous assortment of groups in the QMG’s Department (Guides, Exploring Officers, Mounted Staff Corps as well as the official staff of the QMG). What is surprising is that it worked at all.

In the early years of the war, the role of the engineers was only visible in static operations like the Lines of Torres Vedras and the sieges. By the campaigns of 1813 and 1814, however, the army would have struggled to operate without the presence of engineers and artificers. In these campaigns, pontoons were essential. This sometimes caused problems due to transport, or more accurately, the lack of it and often dictated the speed of operations. This was a huge challenge for the Ordnance as there was never enough transport available to move either guns or pontoons. The final campaign of 1814 saw engineers and artificers embedded in army units for the first time and the army discovered they were useful.

So how do we summarise the role of the Royal Engineers during the Peninsular War? The CRE faced the constant challenge of too few of officers and sappers for the work required. This meant that delivering the service was a constant compromise and on occasions it did directly impact on operations. The lack of resources sometimes caused resentment in the army, when the soldiers and officers felt the demands on them were unreasonable. Sieges were always unpopular, being an inglorious way to die. This led to a lack of enthusiasm among the troops and greater exposure for the engineer officers in leading by example.

Advising Wellington was never easy, but, apart from a small number of high-profile issues, he generally appeared satisfied with the support he was getting. The constant lack of engineering resources must, on occasions, have made audiences with Wellington very uncomfortable. Fletcher reported to Wellington from 1809 up to his death in 1813. There are a number of occasions where it could have been possible to replace him, but Wellington chose not to. Wellington did write some very critical letters home but then again he did that about his army, his generals, the commissary, the British, Portuguese and Spanish governments, the Portuguese and Spanish armies and the Royal Navy.

Even though, on occasions, he was not happy with the engineers’ performance, he did trust them and fought for them. There were occasions where he directly supported Fletcher, Chapman, Squire, Burgoyne and Jones. I am less sure what Wellington’s opinion of Elphinstone was. Examples include asking for John Squire
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to be recalled after his argument with Craufurd in 1810; supporting John Jones when the Board of Ordnance wanted to put him on half pay immediately after the war, and then employing him for the next three years; and writing in support of Fletcher’s family after his death.

One thing which is very apparent is that there was a big difference between Wellington’s relationship with the artillery and with the engineers. Whilst there is no evidence of Wellington complaining about Fletcher, there is no doubt that he manoeuvred Dickson into the senior artillery role. He made life so uncomfortable for Dickson’s superiors that they felt they had no alternative but to go home. Wellington could have done the same with Fletcher. I do not believe that he had concerns about Fletcher, I am less sure about Elphinstone. In the end Wellington made no attempt to interfere with engineer seniority in the same way he did with the artillery.

The relationship between the Army and Ordnance at command level improved during the war. The friction caused by the lack of trained artificers soured relations in 1811–12 but once there were more these troops it stopped being an issue. Similarly, after criticising Wellington for asking for more engineers in July 1809, the Board of Ordnance increased the number of engineers every year. Almost all the increase in officer numbers was allocated to the Peninsula. By the end of the war, the Master-General, in approving a request for more engineer officers to be sent out, said ‘that it is highly important in the present urgent crisis, not to fall short of the demands of the Marquis of Wellington, as he has important fortresses to repair and improve, and may at an early period have new sieges to carry on’. A similar request from Elphinstone, which earned him a rebuke for not following the correct process, was still approved.

Operationally, there is no evidence of significant friction between the engineers, Staff Corps and QMG’s department. In the theatre, the officers got on with what needed to be done and the ‘professional boundaries of responsibility’ were frequently overlooked to get the job done. There was also evidence of officers in the different departments sharing information on best practice to enable them all to improve their effectiveness.

So, why were the engineers so useful? Part of the reason was that army officers received no formal basic training and there were very few officers who had been to Staff College. Ordnance officers would have been a significant proportion of the ‘Scientific Soldiers’ with the army. Was the lack of trained army officers available for staff duties being masked by the availability of Ordnance officers (usually engineers) to carry out these roles in an unofficial capacity? Engineer officers fitted smoothly into the command structure of the army and were always seen as welcome additions to a general’s ‘family’. There are no instances of an engineer officer being removed from a general’s staff group. Even General Robert Craufurd, who had a major row with John Squire, had an engineer officer on his staff most of the time. The senior officers, like Fletcher and Burgoyne, were often used for non-engineering tasks where their experience and sense could be relied on. When one considers the trust that Wellington placed in officers like Dickson, Burgoyne, Sturgeon and Jones, it shows that he greatly valued the contribution of the ‘Scientific Soldiers’ although he never really accepted that formal military education was required before an officer received his first commission.

Wellington’s strategy from the very start of the war was to fight the numerically superior French when the opportunity arose. He also needed strongholds to which he could retire when he was threatened. Whilst Torres Vedras was the most visible sign of this, it also included the major fortresses of Elvas, Badajoz, Almeida and Ciudad Rodrigo and the minor defences at Abrantes, Peniche and Setubal. In conjunction with the strongholds at Gibraltar and Cadiz, the French were never able to concentrate enough troops to overwhelm Wellington. The engineers played their pivotal role in capturing and/or fortifying these places and ensuring that the Allied forces always had a place of safety.

Along with their work in reconnaissance, and in improvements to the road and river communications in the Peninsula, they played an unsung but vital role in the defeat of Napoleon and the key to this success were some very junior officers who took huge responsibilities on their own shoulders and generally made it happen.