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Preface

In this volume are contained the annals of all the many campaigns of 1811, with the exception of those of Suchet’s Valencian expedition in the later months of the year, which for reasons of space have to be relegated to Volume V. It was impossible to exceed the bulk of 660 pages, and the operations on the Mediterranean coast of Spain can be dealt with separately without any grave breach of continuity in the narrative, though this particular Valencian campaign affected the general course of the war far more closely than any other series of operations on the Eastern side of the Peninsula, as I have been careful to point out in the concluding chapters of Section XXIX.

The main interest of 1811, however, centres in the operations of Wellington and his opponents, Masséna, Soult, and Marmont. In the previous year the tide of French conquest reached its high-water mark, when Soult appeared before the walls of Cadiz, and Masséna forced his way to the foot of the long chain of redoubts that formed the Lines of Torres Vedras. Already, before 1810 was over, Masséna’s baffled army had fallen back a few miles, and this first short retreat to Santarem marked the commencement of a never-ceasing ebb of the wave of conquest on the Western side of the Peninsula. Matters went otherwise on the Eastern coast in 1811, but all Suchet’s campaigns were, after all, a side issue. The decisive point lay not in Catalonia or Valencia, but in Portugal.

When Masséna finally evacuated Portugal in March 1811, forced out of his cantonments by Wellington’s skilful use of the sword of famine, a new stage in the war began. The French had lost the advantage of the offensive, and were never to regain it on the Western theatre of war. All through the remainder of 1811 it was the British general who dealt the strokes, and the enemy who had to parry them. The strokes were feeble, because of Wellington’s very limited resources, and for the most part were warded off. Though Almeida fell in May, the siege of Badajoz in June, and the blockade of Ciudad Rodrigo in August and September, were both brought to an end by the concentration of French armies which Wellington was too weak to attack. But the masses of men which Soult and Marmont gathered on the Guadiana in June, and Dorsenne and Marmont gathered on the Agueda in September, had only been collected by a dangerous disgarnishing of the whole of those provinces of Spain which lay beneath the French yoke. They could not remain long assembled, firstly because they could not feed themselves, and secondly because of the peril to which their concentration exposed the abandoned regions in their rear. Hence, in each case, the French commanders, satisfied with having parried Wellington’s stroke for the moment, refused to attack him, and dispersed their armies. That the spirit of the offensive was lost on the French side is sufficiently shown by the fact that when their adversary stood on the defensive upon the Caya in June, and at Alfayates in September, they refused to assail his positions.

We leave the allied and the French armies at the end of the autumn campaign of 1811 still in this state of equipoise. Wellington had made two successive attempts to strike, and had failed, though without any grave loss or disaster, because the forces opposed to him were still too great. His third stroke in January 1812 was to be successful and decisive, but its history belongs to our next volume.

The main bulk of the seven sections herewith presented consists of a narrative of the successive phases of the long deadlock between Wellington and his enemies along the Portuguese frontier: but I have endeavoured to give as clear a narrative as I can compile of all the side-campaigns of the year, in Andalusia, Murcia, Estremadura, Galicia, the Asturias, and Catalonia, and to show their bearings on the general history of the great Peninsular struggle.

I must apologize for the long space of time--three years--that has elapsed between the appearance of the third and the fourth volumes of this work. But it was impossible to produce these sections till I had taken two more voyages over the more important fighting-grounds of 1811--one round Catalonia, the other along the line of Masséna’s retreat from Portugal. It was only in the last days of September 1910 that I was able to accomplish the latter journey. It was made under the happiest conditions, for the government of King Manuel kindly lent me a motor-car, and put at my disposition the services of Captain Teixeira Botelho, an admirable specialist on the artillery side of the Peninsular War. Guided by him, and accompanied by my friend Mr. Rafael Reynolds of Barreiro, I was able to study the topography of Pombal, Redinha, Condeixa, Casal Novo, and Foz do Arouce, not to speak of many other picturesque spots of military interest. Hence my survey of the main fighting-grounds of 1811 has been fairly complete--I spent long days at Fuentes de Oñoro and Albuera, walked all round Badajoz and the field of the Gebora, and studied Tarragona and other Catalan sites. Barrosa alone, I regret to say, I have not been able to visit.

I have to offer grateful thanks to many possessors of documents, who have been good enough to place them at my disposition. The most important of all were the D’Urban papers, lent to me by Mr. W. S. M. D’Urban, of Newport House, near Exeter; the diary and official correspondence of his grandfather, Sir Benjamin D’Urban, Beresford’s Chief-of-the-staff during the Estremaduran campaigns of 1811, were simply invaluable for the comprehension of those operations. I had already acknowledged my indebtedness to the D’Urban papers in my narrative of 1810; but in the following year, when Beresford was acting as the leader of an independent army, they were even more important--as my constant references to them in notes will show.

A new source of high value came to my knowledge last year, through the kindness of Mr. G. Scovell, of Hove, who placed in my hands the papers of his grandfather, Major Scovell, who acted in 1811-12-13 as Wellington’s cipher-secretary. Not only was this officer’s personal diary of great use to me, but the file of the intercepted French dispatches in cipher, with the interpretation of them worked out with infinite pains, proved as valuable as it was interesting. Many of the originals, written on small scraps of the thinnest paper, and folded into such minute shapes that they could be sewed on to a button, or hidden in a coatseam, had evidently been taken on the persons of emissaries of the French generals, who had been captured by the guerrilleros, and had probably in most cases cost the bearers their lives. The ciphers were of two sorts: in the more complicated every word was in cipher; in the less complicated only names of persons and places and the numbers of troops or dates were disguised, the bulk of the dispatch being in plain French. In the key to these last there were several hundred arbitrary numbers used, and it was Major Scovell’s task to make out from the context, or the repetition of the same figures in many documents, what the individual numbers meant. By the end of his researches he had identified four-fifths of the names, and those which he had not all belonged to unimportant persons or places, infrequently mentioned.

A much shorter but quite interesting file of diary and letters placed at my disposal were those of Cornet Francis Hall of the 14th Light Dragoons. They practically covered only the year 1811, but were very full, and written in an animated descriptive style, very different from that of many dry and short journals. They contained by far the best account of the cavalry part of the fighting at Fuentes de Oñoro that I have ever seen, and I am exceedingly obliged to the writer’s granddaughter Miss E. G. Hall for allowing me to utilize them.

I am still occasionally using notes of 1811 made from two collections of unpublished letters, of which I had occasion to speak in my last preface, those of General Le Marchant, now in the hands of Sir Henry Le Marchant of Chobham, and those of General John Wilson belonging to Commander Bertram Chambers R.N. To both of the courteous possessors of these files of correspondence I owe my best thanks.

I must mention, as in previous volumes, much kind help given me by those connected with the military archives of Paris, Madrid, and Lisbon. Once more I must acknowledge the unfailing kindness of M. Martinien at the French War Ministry, who did so much to make easy for me endless searches through the overflowing cartons of its Library. At Madrid Commandant Juan Arzadun of the Artillery Museum placed much suggestive material at my disposal, and found me one or two scarce books, while Major Emilio Figueras at the War Ministry searched out and copied for me a number of unpublished ‘morning states’ of the various Spanish Armies. I must also recur to the name of Captain Teixeira Botelho of the Portuguese Artillery, my companion on the line of Masséna’s retreat, who furnished me with a rich mine of information in his unpublished subsidios para a historia da Artilheria Portugueza.

Among my English helpers I must give a special word of thanks to Major John Leslie, R.A., to whose researches I owe all that I know about the British artillery in the Peninsular War. His ‘Dickson Papers’ are always at my elbow, and I owe him particular gratitude for the Artillery Appendix XXIV, which he has been good enough to compile for me. To the Hon. John Fortescue, the historian of the British Army, whom we were proud to welcome at Oxford as Ford Lecturer this year, I am deeply indebted for his answers to my queries on many dark points, and most especially for his notes as to several suppressed parts of the Wellington Correspondence. Mr. Rafael Reynolds of Barreiro, who shared in my September tour of last year, has obtained for me in Lisbon a number of rare Portuguese volumes, most especially a complete set of Marshal Beresford’s Ordens do Dia for the whole Peninsular War--an almost unprocurable collection, containing every general order, report of a court martial, list of promotions, and statistical paper, which was issued to the Portuguese Army. It is absolutely invaluable for identifying names and dates, and settling questions of organization. The Rev. Alexander Craufurd, grandson of the famous commander of the Light Division, has continued, as in previous years, to place his store of information concerning the campaigns of that hard fighting unit at my disposal.

Lastly, the compiler of the index, a weary task executed under many difficulties, must receive my heartfelt thanks for much loving labour.

I must apologize to readers for some occasional discrepancies in spelling which may be discovered in the text and maps. They are mainly due to the fact that all along the Portuguese-Spanish frontier every town and village is spelt differently by its own inhabitants and by its close neighbours of the other nationality. I find it impossible to avoid the occasional intrusion of a Portuguese spelling of a Spanish locality, and vice versa. Matters are made still more hard by the fact that the spelling of local names in Portugal (less so in Spain) seems to have been much changed since 1811. It is difficult to avoid occasionally an archaic, or on the other hand a too-modern, form for a name. These slight errors, or discrepancies between names as spelled in the text and in the maps, were nearly all caused by alterations between the received spelling of 1811, followed in the maps I used, and that of 1911. I do not think that they will cause any difficulty to the reader, who will not e. g. find it hard to recognize that Foz do Arouce is the same as Foz de Arouce or Casal Novo as Cazal Novo.

In a few cases the critic may find a slight difference in the numbers of troops, or of killed and wounded, which are given in the text and in the appendices. In almost all cases this results from the fact that the official totals quoted in the text turned out not to work out in exact agreement with the detailed list of items in the ‘morning states’ or the complete casualty lists. These errors, always trifling, could not be discovered till the arithmetic of the appendices had been verified, sometimes when the text had already been printed off. The most frequent discrepancies were found in comparing Wellington’s totals of Portuguese strengths or casualties with the detailed official figures. In all instances the differences are small, but the Appendices must be taken to give the more exact numbers.

C. OMAN.

OXFORD: July 1, 1911.

SECTION XXIII THE WINTER CAMPAIGN OF 1810-11

CHAPTER PAGE

I. Masséna at Santarem. The deadlock on the Lower Tagus. December 1810-January 1811 1

II. Soult’s Invasion of Estremadura. January-March 1811. The Battle of the Gebora and the Fall of Badajoz 23

III. Masséna’s Last Weeks at Santarem. January-March 1811 64

IV. Events in the South of Spain. The Battle of Barrosa. January-March 1811 91

SECTION XXIV MASSÉNA’S RETREAT FROM PORTUGAL

I. Santarem to Celorico. March 9th-22nd, 1811 131

II. Guarda and Sabugal. March 22nd-April 12th, 1811 173

SECTION XXV EVENTS IN NORTHERN, EASTERN, AND CENTRAL SPAIN

I. King Joseph and his Troubles 206

II. Suchet on the Ebro. The Fall of Tortosa. December 1810-March 1811 227

SECTION XXVI FUENTES DE OÑORO AND ALBUERA

I. Beresford’s Campaign in Estremadura. The First British Siege of Badajoz. March-May 1811 247

II. Fuentes de Oñoro: Preliminary Operations. April 12th-May 3rd, 1811 288

III. The Battle of Fuentes de Oñoro. May 5th, 1811 315

IV. Brennier’s Escape from Almeida. May 1811 349

V. The Battle of Albuera. May 16th, 1811 363

SECTION XXVII WELLINGTON’S FIRST ESTREMADURAN CAMPAIGN

I. The Second British Siege of Badajoz. May-June 1811 404

II. Wellington on the Caya. June-July 1811 443

III. Events in the North of Spain during the concentration on the Caya. Dorsenne and the Galicians. June-August 1811 461

IV. Soult’s Troubles in Andalusia, July-September 1811 475

SECTION XXVIII OPERATIONS IN EASTERN SPAIN IN THE SPRING, SUMMER, AND AUTUMN OF 1811

I. Figueras and Tarragona. April-May 1811 484

II. The Siege and Fall of Tarragona. May-June 1811 497

III. The Fall of Figueras and the Autumn Campaign in Catalonia. July-October 1811 528

SECTION XXIX WELLINGTON’S AUTUMN CAMPAIGN OF 1811

I. Wellington’s Blockade of Ciudad Rodrigo. August-September 1811 542

II. El Bodon and Aldea da Ponte. September 1811 559

III. The End of Wellington’s Campaigns of 1811. Arroyo dos Molinos. September 1811 583

APPENDICES

I. The French Army in Portugal, Returns of January-April 1811 608

II. Soult’s Army in his First Expedition to Estremadura, January-March 1811 610

III. Spanish Troops in Estremadura, March 1811 610

IV. Graham’s Army at Barrosa, and its Losses 612

V. Victor’s Army at Barrosa, and its Losses 613

VI-VII. British Losses at Pombal, Redinha, Casal Novo, Foz do Arouce, and Sabugal, March-April 1811 614-16

VIII. French Losses at Sabugal, April 3rd, 1811 617

IX. Force of Wellington’s Army at Fuentes de Oñoro, May 3-5, 1811 618

X. British and Portuguese Losses at Fuentes de Oñoro, First Day, May 3 622

XI. British and Portuguese Losses at Fuentes de Oñoro, Second Day, May 5th, 1811 623

XII. The French Army at Fuentes de Oñoro 625

XIII. Masséna’s Orders for Fuentes de Oñoro 629

XIV. French Losses at Fuentes de Oñoro 630

XV. The Allied Army at Albuera, and its Losses, May 16, 1811 631

XVI. Soult’s Army at Albuera, and its Losses 634

XVII. Strength of the Spanish Armies in the Summer of 1811 636

XVIII. Strength of the French Army in Spain, July 15, 1811 638

XIX. French and Spanish Forces at the Siege of Tarragona 643

XX. Wellington’s Army on the Beira Frontier, September 15 644

XXI. Allied Losses at the Combat of El Bodon 648

XXII. Allied Losses at the Combat of Aldea da Ponte 648

XXIII. Hill’s Force in Estremadura, September-October 1811 649

XXIV. The British Artillery in the Peninsula during the Campaign of 1811 650

INDEX 653

MAPS AND PLANS

I. BADAJOZ AND THE BATTLE OF THE GEBORA To face 54

II. GENERAL MAP OF THE BARROSA CAMPAIGN ” 104

III. THE BATTLE OF BARROSA ” 124

IV. COMBAT OF REDINHA ” 144

V. COMBAT OF CASAL NOVO ” 152

VI. COMBAT OF FOZ DO AROUCE ” 158

VII. MASSÉNA’S RETREAT. LEIRIA TO THE ALVA RIVER ” 166

VIII. COMBAT OF SABUGAL ” 196

IX. MASSÉNA’S RETREAT. CELORICO TO CIUDAD RODRIGO ” 200

X. PLAN OF THE SIEGE OF TORTOSA ” 238

XI. THE BRITISH SIEGES OF BADAJOZ IN MAY AND JUNE 1811 ” 286

XII. BATTLE OF FUENTES DE OÑORO (two plates) ” 316,338

XIII. BATTLE OF ALBUERA (two plates) ” 384,394

XIV. GENERAL MAP OF ESTREMADURA ” 452

XV. PLAN OF THE SIEGE OF TARRAGONA ” 524

XVI. GENERAL MAP OF CATALONIA ” 538

ILLUSTRATIONS

PORTRAIT OF GENERAL PICTON Frontispiece

PORTRAIT OF GENERAL GRAHAM To face 96

PORTRAIT OF MARSHAL BERESFORD ” 260

BRITISH ARMY CROSSING THE TAGUS AT VILLA VELHA ” 408

FORT SAN CRISTOBAL ” 424

SECTION XXIII

THE WINTER CAMPAIGN OF 1810-11

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