Ian Brunskill - The Times Great Military Lives - Leadership and Courage – from Waterloo to the Falklands in Obituaries

The position taken up by Wellington when he transferred his operations from the south to the north frontier of Portugal was at Fuente Guinaldo, a locality possessing some advantageous features in the neighbourhood of Ciudad Rodrigo. His thoughts being still occupied by the means of gaining the border fortresses, he had promptly turned to Rodrigo from Badajoz, and had arranged his plans with a double prospect of success. Knowing that the place was inadequately provisioned he conceived hopes of blockading it into submission from his post at Fuente Guinaldo, since in the presence of this force no supplies could be thrown into the town unless escorted by a convoy equal to the army under his command. Either, therefore, the French marshal must abandon Rodrigo to its fate, or he must go through the difficult operation of concentrating all his forces to form the convoy required. Marmont chose the latter alternative, and uniting his army with that of Dorsenne advanced to the relief of Rodrigo with an immense train of stores and 60,000 fighting men. By this extraordinary effort not only was the place provisioned, but Wellington himself was brought into a situation of some peril, for after successfully repulsing an attempt of the French in the memorable combat of El Bodon he found himself the next day, with only 15,000 men actually at his disposal, exposed to the attack of the entire French army. Fortunately Marmont was unaware of the chance thus offered him, and while he was occupying himself in evolutions and displays Wellington collected his troops and stood once more in security on his position. This movement, however, of the French commander destroyed all hopes of reducing Rodrigo by blockade, and the British general recurred accordingly to the alternative he nad been contemplating of an assault by force.

To comprehend the difficulties of this enterprise, it must be remembered that the superiority of strength was indisputably with the French whenever they concentrated their forces, and that it was certain such concentration would be attempted, at any risk, to save such a place as Rodrigo. Wellington, therefore, had to prepare, with such secrecy as to elude the suspicions of his enemy, the enormous mass of materials required for such a siege as that he projected. As the town stood on the opposite or Spanish bank of the river Agueda, and as the approaches were commanded by the guns of the garrison, it became necessary to construct a temporary bridge. Moreover, the heavy battering train, which alone required 5,000 bullocks to draw it, had to be brought up secretly to the spot, though it was a work almost of impossibility to get a score of cattle together. But these difficulties were surmounted by the inventive genius of the British commander. Preparing his battering train at Lisbon, he shipped it at that port as if for Cadiz, transshipped it into smaller craft at sea, and then brought it up the stream of the Douro. In the next place, he succeeded, beyond the hopes of his engineers, in rendering the Douro navigable for a space of 40 miles beyond the limit previously presumed, and at length he collected the whole necessary materials in the rear of his army without any knowledge on the part of his antagonist. He was now to reap the reward of his precaution and skill. Towards the close of the year the French armies having – conformably to directions of the Emperor, framed entirely on the supposition that Wellington had no heavy artillery – been dispersed in cantonments, the British general suddenly threw his bridge across the Agueda, and besieged Ciudad Rodrigo in force. Ten days only elapsed between the investment and the storm. On the 8th of January, 1812, the Agueda was crossed, and on the 19th the British were in the city. The loss of life greatly exceeded the limit assigned to such expenditure in the scientific calculations of military engineers; but the enterprise was undertaken in the face of a superior force, which could at once have defeated it by appearing on the scene of action; and so effectually was Marmont baffled by the vigour of the British that the place had fallen before his army was collected for its relief. The repetition of such a stroke at Badajoz, which was now Wellington’s aim, presented still greater difficulties, for the vigilance of the French was alarmed, the garrison of the place had been reconstituted by equal draughts from the various armies in order to interest each marshal personally in its relief, and Soult in Andalusia, like Marmont in Castile, possessed a force competent to overwhelm any covering army which Wellington could detach. Yet on the 7th of April Badajoz likewise fell, and after opening a new campaign with these famous demonstrations of his own sagacity and the courage of his troops, he prepared for a third time to advance definitely from Portugal into Spain.

Though the forces of Napoleon in the Peninsula were presently to be somewhat weakened by the requirements of the Russian war, yet at the moment when these strongholds were wrenched from their grasp the ascendancy of the Emperor was yet uncontested, and from the Niemen to the Atlantic there was literally no resistance to his universal dominion save by this army, which was clinging with invincible tenacity to the rocks of Portugal, at the western extremity of Europe. From these well defended lines, however, they were now to emerge, and while Hill, by his surprise of Gerard at Arroyo Molinos and his brilliant capture of the forts at the bridge of Almaraz, was alarming the French for the safety of Andalusia, Wellington began his march to the Pyrenees. On this occasion he was at first unimpeded. So established was the reputation of the troops and their general that Marmont retired as he advanced, and Salamanca, after four years of oppressive occupation, was evacuated before the liberating army. But the hosts into which Wellington had thus boldly plunged with 40,000 troops still numbered fully 270,000 soldiers, and though these forces were divided by distance and jealousies, Marmont had no difficulty in collecting an army numerically superior to that of his antagonist. Returning, therefore, to the contest, and hovering about the English general for the opportunity of pouncing at an advantage upon his troops, he gave promise of a decisive battle, and, after some days of elaborate manoeuvring, the opposing armies found themselves confronted, on the 22d of July, in the vicinity of Salamanica. It was a trial of strategy, but in strategy as well as vigour the French marshal was surpassed by his redoubtable adversary. Seizing with intuitive genius an occasion which Marmont offered, Wellington fell upon his army and routed it so completely that half of its effective force was destroyed in the engagement. So decisively had the blow been dealt, and so skilfully had it been directed, that, as Napoleon had long fortold of such an event, it paralysed the entire French force in Spain, and reduced it to the relative position so long maintained by the English – that of tenacious defence. The only two considerable armies now remaining were those of Suchet in the east, and Soult in the south. Suchet, on hearing of Marmont’s defeat, proposed that the French should make a Portugal of their own in Catalonia, and defend themselves in its fastnesses till aid could arrive from the Pyrenees; while Soult advocated with equal warmth a retirement into Andalusia and a concentration behind the Guadiana. There was little time for deliberation, for Wellington was hot upon his prey, but as King Joseph decamped from his capital he sent orders to Soult to evacuate Andalusia; and the victorious army of the British, after thus, by a single blow, clearing half Spain of its invaders, made its triumphant entry into Madrid.

Wellington was now in possession of the capital of Spain. He had succeeded in delivering that blow which had so long been meditated, and had signalized the crowing ascendancy of his army by the total defeat of his chief opponent in open field. But his work was far from finished, and while all around was rejoicing and triumph, his forecast was anxiously revolving the imminent contingencies of the war. In one sense, indeed, the recent victory had increased rather than lessened the dangers of his position, for it had driven his adversaries by force of common peril into a temporary concert, and Wellington well knew that any such concert would reduce him again to the defensive. Marshal Soult, it was true, had evacuated Andalusia, and King Joseph Madrid; but their forces had been carried to Suchet’s quarters in Valencia, where they would thus form an overpowering concentration of strength; and in like manner, though Marmont’s army had been shorn of half its numbers, it was rapidly recovering itself under Clauzel by the absorption of all the detachments which had been operating in the north. Wellington saw, therefore, that he must prepare himself for a still more decisive struggle, if not for another retreat; and conceiving it most important to disembarrass his rear, he turned round upon Clauzel with the intention of crushing him before he could be fully reinforced, and thus establishing himself securely on the line of the Douro to wait the advance of King Joseph from the east.