Wellington’s Engineers: Military Engineering on the Peninsular War 1808-1814 (8 page)

The bridge over the Tietar, from Douglas
,

First contact with the French was on 22 July and Wellesley wanted a full attack the following morning whilst the Allies had a great superiority in numbers. Cuesta would not agree to this and when they advanced two days later, the French, having realised their inferiority, had retired. Cuesta then pursued them alone, coming up against the reinforced French army near Toledo. The Spanish were forced into a rapid retreat and were back at Talavera on 27 July. Fletcher remained with Wellesley at Talavera but was keeping his officers busy. On 25 July, Lieutenant Richard Mudge RE was sent forward to reconnoitre the Alberche and Mulcaster was sent to the Tagus at Arzobispo and Almaraz. Mulcaster was impressed by the bridge at Almaraz saying ‘It is forever to be lamented that as fine an edifice should have been ruined’. He also recorded that the bridge of pontoons put in place by Cuesta depended on dry weather.
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The following morning Mulcaster returned to Arzobispo and, hearing accounts of a defeat the day before, rushed back to Talavera but arrived too late to take any part in the battle.

On the morning of 27 July, the Allied army was now facing a stronger French force than expected and the supply system had failed, with the British troops already on half rations. Jones recorded that after Wellington and Cuesta had discussed the situation, at around 11 a.m. He was ordered to construct a redoubt for ten guns in the centre of the Allied position. This was carried out using 200-strong working parties from the British brigades.
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This redoubt was to play a vital part in the battle the following day.

The French attacked unexpectedly that night but after some confusion were driven back. Boothby, who was on General Sherbrooke’s staff and had been with him during the day, found a billet in Talavera and then as the firing continued into the evening rode out to find his general who was ‘glad of [his] timely arrival’ as few of his staff were present. Boothby was used to convey orders and as darkness fell, he found himself out in front of the British line as the French approached: ‘It instantly struck us both that in the confusion of night the fire would spread down the whole line in which case we should be blown to pieces … I found myself galloping up into an interrupted sheet of fire [when] I was struck in the leg by a musket ball, which brought me to the ground.’
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General Sherbrooke found Boothby later and ordered him carried from the field where he had to wait until the 29th for his leg to be amputated. His book goes into graphic detail of the process of amputation. Boothby was one of the wounded captured by the French when Cuesta abandoned them after the battle. He received good advice from fellow engineer Henry Goldfinch who had been captured at Oporto; ‘You must cry out “
Capitaine Anglais
” and you will be treated well’. This proved to be true although Boothby remained in captivity until the middle of 1810.

The main battle was on 28 July, where several French attacks were repulsed but not without significant Allied casualties. Fletcher, with his new adjutant Rice Jones, remained at Wellesley’s side throughout the battle with Jones recording he took messages to the Allied cavalry on the left flank of the army. Lieutenant Stanway was wounded ‘in the belly’ whilst serving on General Mackenzie’s staff, the two other engineer officers, Goldfinch and Forster, being unhurt. Forster was thanked for his services in the general orders of the 4th Division. There was also another unexpected casualty amongst the small group of Royal Engineer officers. Lieutenant Edward Fyers had become unwell with mental health problems. Burgoyne described finding him on 2 August at Oropesa ‘with a fever and insane’. Mulcaster commented that ‘Fyers had got off’ on 9 August. Fyers, who was the son of Colonel William Fyers RE, was eventually committed to a mental asylum in 1819 but still held his rank in the Corps up to that time, including promotion to captain in 1813.

The day after the battle Wellesley was faced with failing rations for the troops and around 4,000 wounded. Believing he was safe, he remained on the battlefield, unaware that Soult was descending on his rear with superior forces. Soult arrived at Plasencia on 1 August, seizing Wellesley’s stores and then advanced to attempt to take the crossing-points over the Tagus at Almaraz and Arzobispo, thereby cutting Wellesley’s communications with Portugal. Wellesley, still believing that Soult only had a small force with him, set off to intercept him on 3 August, leaving his wounded in the care of Cuesta. The reality of the situation was then discovered and Wellesley chose to retreat, rejecting Cuesta’s preference to again face the French. The British passed over the Tagus at Arzobispo on the morning of 4 August, leaving the Spanish in possession of the crossing-point. Wellesley also ordered Craufurd’s brigade to reinforce the Spanish holding the crossing at Almaraz as its loss could once again threaten the retreat. They arrived there on 6 August with Fletcher visiting on the next day and marking out additional batteries to defend the crossing. Jones commented ‘we were a little disturbed by the firing of the enemy’ from the other side of the river. Captain Chapman, who had arrived from Lisbon on 30 July, was sent the following day to construct the batteries. On 8 August, the French took the crossing at Arzobispo from the Spanish. The next few days the armies faced each other across the Tagus, the French finally recognising that the Allied armies had evaded them. Wellesley was able to retire unmolested back to the Portuguese border around Badajoz. Whilst the British government tried hard to sell Talavera as a great victory, many were unconvinced, reading of a British army retreating before a French one for the second time in a year. Wellesley, now Viscount Wellington, had learnt the same hard lessons as Sir John Moore. The Iberian Peninsula was a difficult environment in which to move and feed an army, operations with the Spanish were fraught with difficulties and if the French could concentrate their forces they were too strong to resist.

During the retreat after the Battle of Talavera, it is interesting to note that within days of receiving a report from Chapman,
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both Fletcher and Wellington had separately written home mentioning the defence of Lisbon.
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Chapman, who was now with the army, dated his report 18 August 1809, so it was probably completed whilst the army rested at Truxillo. The options were clearly being discussed as the troops retreated westward. On 10 August, Canning, in a letter to Marquess Wellesley (Sir Arthur’s brother), the newly-appointed ambassador to Spain, had also posed the question, could Portugal be defended? Wellington’s view was outlined to Castlereagh, Secretary of State for War and the Colonies:

My opinion is, that we ought to be able to hold Portugal, if the Portuguese army and Militia are complete. The difficulty upon this sole question lies in the embarkation of the British Army. There are so many entrances into Portugal, the whole country being frontier, that it would be very difficult to prevent the enemy from penetrating; and it is probable that we should be obliged to confine ourselves to the preservation of that which is most important, the capital … However, I have not entirely made up my mind upon this interesting point. I have a great deal of information upon it, but I should wish to have more before I can decide upon it.
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Wellesley had held his positive view on the defence of Portugal since his first visit. When he wrote his
Memorandum of the Defence of Portugal
for the British government in March 1809 he clearly stated ‘I have always been of the opinion that Portugal might be defended, whatever might be the result of the contest in Spain … The French would not have been able to overrun Portugal with a force smaller than 100,000 men’.
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Although his argument must have been at least partially accepted by the government, Fletcher, like most others, was more pessimistic:

The practicability of defending the Capital to the last extremity and of afterwards embarking the British troops I confess I have always doubted. Sir Arthur Wellesley is naturally anxious to combine these two objects, but I believe that he now begins to feel that the doing so, would be certainly difficult if not altogether impossible. The ground is in itself unfavourable and a very long line must be established to save the retreat of the army … Even admitting that the city of Lisbon, as a fortified position were tenable … I should imagine that a population of perhaps three hundred thousand souls cannot be long supported in a town without magazines … These ideas generally, I have continued to submit to the consideration of Sir Arthur Wellesley, who now seems to be of the opinion, that these are almost insuperable difficulties opposed to the measure of defending Lisbon to the last extremity, and then embarking the British troops.

Fletcher finished his letter saying: ‘He [Wellington] however means to revisit that place in a short time to determine what steps can be taken.’
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Once the army was safe and settled, Wellington’s primary task was to make this decision. One of the few advantages the Allies had at this time was the inability of the French to concentrate their forces. There were a number of reasons for this. Firstly, the French marshals were not good at working together, their egos and characters often making co-operation difficult. Secondly, Napoleon tried to conduct the war from a distance, never giving overall command to any one of his subordinates. This made formulation of an overall strategy almost impossible. Thirdly, the resistance of the Spanish population required the use of large numbers of French troops to keep order. This meant these troops were not available for field operations. Finally, the presence of islands of resistance across the Iberian Peninsula meant the French had to spread their immense resources thinly. There was not only Lisbon, but Gibraltar, Cadiz, Tarragona and Alicante, all of which needed to be watched and could launch attacks with little warning. This factor was a key component in Wellington’s thinking on the defence of Portugal.

Whilst the army settled into winter quarters, there was no let-up for the engineers in the reconnaissance work. Fletcher continued to receive a flurry of surveys from across central Portugal and Spain, all of which will have added to Wellington’s knowledge of the operational area. Many of these were based around the route of the retreat with surveys of the Guadiana, the border roads and towns and the routes back to Lisbon. Goldfinch, Mulcaster and Stanway were principally involved in this work.

On 7 October, Wellington invested Sir John Sherbrooke with the Order of the Bath. Mulcaster succinctly described the event as a ‘grand let off and dance in the evening with ugly women and bad singing’.
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The following morning Wellington left Badajoz for Lisbon, the primary purpose of the visit being to decide on the defensibility of Portugal. With him travelled the engineers Fletcher, Chapman and Rice Jones. The planning for the following year had started.

Most people interested in the Peninsular War will have heard of the Lines of Torres Vedras, but probably not much more. Even modern works on the Peninsular War have treated it very lightly. For example, Esdaile’s recent single-volume work has a chapter of twenty-eight pages entitled Torres Vedras, but all mention of the Lines has ended by the second paragraph of the second page.
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David Gates’ book takes even less space to deal with them. Oman sets aside seventeen good pages of description (out of 5,000 in total) and Fortescue a mere three pages out of several thousand. Recently, we only have Norris and Bremner’s rare booklet, Ian Fletcher’s Osprey book and John Grehan’s work on Torres Vedras as the only serious attempts to describe the Lines since John T. Jones’s secret work of 1829, which later became Volume 3 of his third edition of 1846 on the sieges of the Peninsular War. It is understandable that there is less interest in this part of the war as it does not involve any battles and the Lines were never assaulted. However, the Lines of Torres Vedras were every bit as important to Wellington as his victories on the field of battle.

The situation in the Peninsula at the end of 1809 was not good for Britain, neither politically nor militarily. Initial enthusiasm for the defence of the Iberian Peninsula had waned in the light of events. Wellesley’s early victories at Roliça and Vimeiro were followed by the deeply unpopular Convention of Cintra. Worse followed with Moore’s valiant attempt to assist the Spanish that turned into the costly retreat and evacuation of the British army from Corunna in January 1809. Wellesley’s return to the Peninsula in April that year had early success at Oporto followed by the dubious victory at Talavera, and the year ended with the British still in the Iberian Peninsula but back in Portugal with no-one being happy with the situation, neither the Spanish, the Portuguese, the British nor even the French! If we take into account the wider strategic context of the last few years, including the British surrender in South America and the problems in Sweden and Walcheren, the public perception of the British military was not good.

The Anglo-Portuguese and Spanish military only survived in 1808–9 thanks to the difficulty the French had concentrating their more numerous troops, but the French knew they could not allow this to continue. The British presence needed to be crushed quickly to stop it bolstering the weak Spanish and Portuguese resistance. The main difficulty for the French in achieving this was their war with Austria. An Austrian success would distract Napoleon’s attention from the Iberian Peninsula for the foreseeable future, but a defeat would allow the massive French military machine to swing in the direction of Spain. Events in central Europe were being watched anxiously in both London and Lisbon and when Austria’s defeat at Wagram in July 1809 was announced, everyone knew this meant that Napoleon would send more troops to the Peninsula. Wellington, writing to Castlereagh in August 1809, commented: ‘Napoleon is reinforcing his armies in Spain, you may depend on it. He and his marshals are desirous of revenging on us the different blows we have given them, and when they come to the Peninsula, their first and great object will be to get the English out.’
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In the army these events were also being followed carefully, Ensign John Aitchison of the 3rd Guards commenting: ‘We have it from the French that peace was signed on 1st October – they say B [Bonaparte] himself is to come to Spain.’
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Mucaster commented in a similar manner: ‘There is an account that Austria has given up Trieste to France to settle the existing differences. Should this be the case we cannot expect a very long residence in this country.’
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The British government was in a difficult situation. They could not match the size of the vast French armies and were continually concerned about the loss of their largest (and only) land force. It had to be protected from destruction. This left the conundrum that England needed to stay to support the Iberian defenders, but in the last resort it would have to evacuate the army rather than risk losing it.

Wellington would have been aware of his government’s concern when he arrived back in the Peninsula in April 1809 and will have also watched from afar the events unfolding in central Europe even whilst he was campaigning in central Spain. As well as the events in Europe, there was also turmoil at home in both the government and the monarchy. About the same time that Wellington heard of the Austrian defeat, he also learnt that the government at home had fallen as a consequence of the ill health of the Prime Minister, Portland, and the political fall-out of the Walcheren campaign that led to the duel between Castlereagh and Canning. King George III was also seriously ill, and as the Prince Regent was aligned to the Whig party, who were strongly against the war, it was likely there would be a change in government soon.

Whilst the pessimists in the British army in Portugal and England, and that included pretty much everybody, were saying that the army was only pausing momentarily before it ran for the ships, some people were thinking about how to stop the French tidal wave. Once the army was safely back at the Portuguese border, Wellington’s thoughts turned to future operations and the security of the Allied forces. He left Badajoz on 8 October 1809 and arrived in Lisbon on the 12th. His party included George Murray, Quarter Master-General, Benjamin D’Urban, QMG of the Portuguese army and three engineer officers; Lieutenant Colonel Richard Fletcher, Captain Stephen Chapman and Lieutenant Rice Jones. The next few days were spent reconnoitring both the hills to the north of Lisbon and the terrain as far south as Setuval.

Rice Jones, writing to his father who was a Captain in the Denbeigh Militia, commented:

I know that his Lordship and the Col [Fletcher] have been riding all over the country for 30 miles round, and have nearly knocked up Colonel Fletcher’s stud; from which it is easy to conclude that the ground to be occupied for the defence of Lisbon is a material part of the Commander of the Forces’ business at this place.
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Rice Jones continued in the typical style of the British officer of that period writing home and divulged confidential information: ‘I will also tell you what is an impenetrable secret at present even to our officers; viz., that
all
our Corps are ordered from the army to a place called Castanheira … and understand there are a great many works in contemplation.’ His letter concludes with the other typical theme of officers writing home:

These measures look too much like a determination … to defend Portugal to the last extremity; that extremity will certainly arise as soon as the French are able to advance in any force, and we shall then very likely have just such a scramble to get off as the army at Corunna last year.

It appears that Fletcher was not always with Wellington when looking at the area. Fletcher and Chapman visited St Julian on 15 October and Fletcher reported his finding to Wellington in a letter of the same date.
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The result of this visit led to Wellington’s famous memo to Fletcher of 20 October 1809, describing the work that was to be carried out. This was an outline of the task which he would have developed through riding through the hills, by talking to the Portuguese and looking at previous analyses of the area, particularly by the French engineer Vincent and the Portuguese engineer Neves Costa. Wellington had also operated in this area during the previous year’s campaign and would have built up some knowledge of the terrain. The detailed design of the Lines was developed over the coming months by Fletcher and the British, Portuguese and German engineers. Each redoubt was individually designed to fit the terrain and its operational needs. If you break down the many paragraphs of Wellington’s memorandum into general tasks it looks like this:

Of the twenty-nine activities listed, only just over half were related to building forts. The original plan was to build a single line of defence. This eventually became the second line. In front of this line, two major forts were to be built at Torres Vedras and Sobral to blunt any French advance. As more time became available, the basic plan for the Lines was expanded to include many more forts and other defensive measures.

Wellington’s memorandum was very detailed in terms of where needed to be surveyed and the purpose of the defences, but there was generally no detail about what was to be built. The only exceptions were for the major forts at Torres Vedras, Montachique and Sobral, but even for these Wellington described no more than the capacity of the fort (e.g., for 4,000 men) with no specifics on the design or the number of guns. These details was left to the engineers to plan and implement. Wellington wrote to Beresford on 26 October ordering nearly 2,000 Portuguese militia to report to Torres Vedras, Sobral and St Julian and on the 31st ordered the commissary to prepare 19,000 palisades and 10,000 fascines. Wellington returned to Badajoz on 27 October 1809 and then travelled on to Seville, leaving Fletcher to co-ordinate the work.

The primary purpose of the Lines of Torres Vedras was to defend the four main routes to Lisbon though the passes at Mafra, Montachique and Bucellas and the river route past Alhandra. Descriptions of the Lines usually focus on the two defensive lines to the north of Lisbon and the embarkation point at St Julian. In addition, a fourth line was built on the left (south) bank of the Tagus opposite Lisbon and defences were strengthened at Setubal and Peniche. There were also defensive works around the perimeter of the city of Lisbon. The key defences were:

Following the issue of Wellington’s memorandum of 20 October, Fletcher issued a general recall to all Royal Engineer officers except two, Burgoyne and Emmett who were with the army at Badajoz. By the end of the month almost all the engineer officers in the Peninsula had arrived in Lisbon.
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Work started in early November 1809, as soon as the engineer officers began arriving. The initial focus was on the embarkation point at St Julian and the two major advance posts at Sobral and Torres Vedras. Once these were under way, the focus moved to the extensive fortifications of what became the second line.

Rice Jones’ excitement diminished rapidly when he was left in Lisbon by Fletcher to co-ordinate the various activities for his commander whilst the other engineers started work on the Lines. He complained ‘I am the only officer here except Hamilton who continues so lame since he was wounded at Oporto.’
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The reason Fletcher had left him in Lisbon was because Jones’ health was not good. One of the tasks that fell to Rice Jones was paying the civilian workmen. He noted in his diary on 29 November, riding ‘to Sobral where I mustered and paid the artificers’ and similarly on 17 December he ‘rode to Torres Vedras … and settled with the artificers’.

Fletcher continually moved around the area north of Lisbon and corresponded with Wellington on his findings and his recommendations. He wrote a long and detailed report to Wellington on 25 December making recommendation on redoubts to be built at various points. He also noted his concern that the number of workers requested for St Julian and Sobral had not been provided despite a number of requests through Marshal Beresford and this would delay completion of the defences. Complaints about the shortage of workmen were a constant theme thoughout the whole period of the construction, with Fletcher, Beresford and Wellington writing to the Portuguese authorities at different times. Fletcher finished his letter by reporting that Captain Goldfinch was assisting the Portuguese engineers on the defences of Lisbon
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‘as requested by Marshal Beresford’ as well as superintending the work at St Julian. Another engineer officer had been sent to Abrantes to assist Captain Patton in fortifying the town. A few days later, Fletcher wrote another extensive letter on the position at Castanheira on the Tagus. Although he did not make any specific recommendations, leaving the decision to Wellington, the work to make the area defensible appeared significant. Although initially Wellington was in favour of carrying out the works, when he visited a few weeks later the decision was made to move the position back to Alhandra.
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