Rifles: Six Years With Wellington's Legendary Sharpshooters (10 page)

The paths of Privates Costello and McNabb thus crossed bright and early one morning that October. Captain Samuel Mitchell, a tough Scot who had been shot in the arm at the Coa while at the head of his 6th Company, had heard reports of his countryman. Having recovered his health in Lisbon, Mitchell was quite determined that McNabb should join the party returning for service with the 95th. The old soldier insisted his services were indispensable at the hospital, ‘so was tied to a bullock cart and amid the jeers of the soldiers, conveyed back to his regiment’. The party set off with McNabb stumbling along, suffering the taunts of Costello and others, much as someone in the pillory might.

For George Simmons, hobbling about on his wounded leg, and Harry Smith, there was still a little time for recuperation and reflection. They sometimes escaped the city’s heat by making up a bathing party and dipping in the icy Atlantic waters. Neither man particularly wanted to delay his departure, for Smith had a rare kind of hunger for advancement and Simmons simply could not afford life in Lisbon.

While he was at the Rua de Buenos Ayres, Simmons received a letter from his parents. Brother Maud had sent home reports of the gravity of George’s injuries. They had learned too that officers of the 95th were more exposed to danger than those of almost any other regiment in the Army. George tried to allay their fears, writing, ‘You make me blush at the idea or observation in the letter, “a dangerous regiment”. My dear father, “the more danger the more honour”. Never let such weak thoughts enter your head.’

Simmons, like Costello, could not wait to get back to his brothers in arms. They had seen the horrible sights of war all right, but they had reacted in quite the opposite way to McNabb and his ilk. For most of those injured in the 95th did not want to join the ranks of the Rangers. To come through the fire and blood, having conducted yourself in a way that drew the praise of messmates, was just about all that was worth living for. The ironic humour, the softly spoken determination in the face of death: these were the things that drew them back, not the fear of the lash or any desire to please some tyrant like Craufurd.

Had Simmons wanted to give in to his parents’ fears, there were some avenues open to him. An exchange of commissions with an officer serving in some quiet corner of England was one route. Of course, he did not consider it for a moment. He had not forgotten his altruistic notion of helping to educate his brothers, and soon enough he’d be
finding money from his meagre pay to send home again. But a powerful new idea now motivated his soldiering, expressed to his father this way: ‘I have established my name as a man worthy to rank with the veterans of my regiment, and am esteemed and respected by every brother officer.’ Simmons regretted only that his wound had not been suffered in a general action – a battle in which both armies were arrayed under their commanders in chief – for the blood money was usually better under such circumstances. All the more unfortunate for the young subaltern, since a general action was exactly what his comrades who remained with the 95th were about to experience.

Early in the morning of 27 September, the
voltigeurs
of the 69
ème
Régiment
rooted about their baggage. Water was on the boil for their coffee, and some gnawed at stale bread or some morsel of corn left over from their meal of the night before. They had marched deep into Portugal, part of an invasion army of sixty-five thousand under Marshal André Masséna. The 69th belonged to Ney’s corps within it, and had already had several brushes with the Light Division.

In the early-morning gloom, they could make out the Sierra de Busaco, which they knew was lined with British troops. The massif lay in front of them, like some great snoozing bear. The feet were anchored on the River Mondego, securing one flank. The ground rose up into a great ridge almost four miles long, and then dropped down somewhat at the neck of the beast, where there was a village called Sula. Not far from Sula was the walled convent of Busaco, but it was on the reverse slope, invisible to the French. The natural dip or neck offered the easiest path for the local road from Moura, at the base of the ridge, up across, through Sula and on to Lisbon. Up beyond this road (to the British left or French right of it) the ground went up again slightly, forming the head of the position. Beyond this crown was a difficult little valley, a gorge almost of a stream called the Milijoso, which secured Wellington’s other flank.

Masséna and a party of his staff officers had already been gazing up at this monstrous position, having gone as far forward as Moura in their reconnaissance. One officer with the Imperial Army noted noted:

There had been a heated discussion the night before about the wisdom of assaulting the Busaco position under such adverse conditions. Masséna dismissed his chief of staff’s desire to bypass the ridge, telling him, ‘You like manoeuvring, but this is the first time that Wellington seems ready to give battle and I want to profit from the opportunity.’ Masséna, like many of the French officers, considered Wellington’s tactics so far to have been an unseemly combination of timidity – where his own soldiers’ lives were concerned – and ruthlessness, in overseeing the removal of much of the Portuguese rural population, as well as their crops, so that the French would not be able to sustain themselves. If Wellington that day was ready to fight like a man for a change, then Masséna, a tactician considered second only to Napoleon himself in skill and daring, intended to take the bull by the horns.

The noisy arguments between Masséna and his subordinates were quite typical of the French staff’s proceedings in the Peninsula. These fellows like Ney, Reynier and Junot owed their advancement to Napoleon’s personal patronage. Since the Emperor had been absent from Spain for more than a year and a half, they became quite nervous about suffering some disaster that might result in their fall from grace. Although placed under Masséna’s orders, they reserved the right to criticise his decisions while circulating their own version of events through letters to friends in Paris. On the evening of 26 September, however, they were forced into an uncomfortable calculation. Ney and some of the others believed the moment to force the British position had already passed – and there was some justice in this because Wellington had received some late reinforcements – but they had no choice but to fall in with Masséna because the Emperor’s orders were unambiguous on the point of his authority. As far as the marshal was concerned, Busaco would offer his one chance of a knockout blow against the British.

Masséna’s orders involved throwing two
corps d’armée
into the assault. General Reynier’s would take a small track that led up to the peak of the sierra, with the aim of breaking the British line and forcing them to commit their reserves. Marshal Ney would then send his divisions up the road from Moura to Sula and break through at that vital
point. Masséna ordered Ney’s 6th Corps to be ‘preceded by its skirmishers. Arriving on the mountain’s crest it will from in [battle] line.’ A third corps under General Junot would hang back in reserve.

Sub-Lieutenant Marcel of the
voltigeur
or light-infantry company of the 69
ème
formed his men up early that morning, ignorant of Masséna’s precise orders, but quite sure that if there was going to be a battle, his skirmishers would be leading the way. Marcel had been conscripted from his native Aube in 1806 and his rise showed how an active and intelligent man could climb in the French system. He was rapidly promoted to corporal and then sergeant, gaining his officer’s commission early in 1810 for his gallantry in the field. For a British soldier, the promotion from recruit to officer in under four years would have been unthinkable. There were other rewards too: a cross of the
Légion d’honneur
did not just make a nice bauble on a soldier’s chest, it also carried a pension. There was no flogging in the French Army. Instead, the officers would inspire a column that faltered under enemy fire with slogans, among them: ‘
L’Empereur recompensera le premier
qu’avancera
’ (The Emperor will reward the first to go forward).

Marcel, a tough little man, had every confidence that his
voltigeurs
could climb the Busaco ridge. They had fought the British at the Coa and they’d beaten them, just like the Emperor had beaten all the others. The young officer believed that ‘happiness, ardour, and love of glory showed on the face of each soldier: the youngest had three years of service; what couldn’t one do with such men?’

As the attack columns moved up past Masséna, the marshal knew it was vital that they keep going until they had crowned the heights. If his men stopped so they might return fire at the British, then all momentum would be lost and the attack would fail. The need to move forward even overrode the fact that marching slowly up the steep slope while staying in deep columns would make them horribly vulnerable to British fire. As the 69
ème
filed past him, Masséna called out to the troops: ‘No cartridges, go in with the bayonet!’

Plumes of dust were kicked up by the French columns as they wheeled towards the foot of the ridge. The 95th were able to watch the whole spectacle, for they were on the mountain’s forward slope, having taken up positions to shoot at the French with every plodding step they took up the forbidding incline. The usual arrangements for combining battalions within the Light Division had been changed this day, with Beckwith commanding a great force of skirmishers, including his
own 95th, the 1st
Cacadores
of the Portuguese army, light infantrymen, many of whom had also been given the excellent Baker rifle, and some similarly armed King’s German Legion men – in all over 1,200 sharpshooters. Beckwith had placed his British riflemen on the left of his line and the rest to the right. Watching the French approaching, the riflemen chose positions among the boulders and firs that littered the steep incline. Few men were held in reserve as supports, since there was no prospect of cavalry being used against them. Further along the ridge, towards the Mondego, there were many more Allied skirmishers from Portuguese battalions or the light companies of British ones waiting too. By 5.45 a.m., the leading French scouts were exchanging shots with the British forward posts.

Wellington’s position was a very long one, but he had made sure that there were sufficient forces to hold the col at Sula, where he felt sure the French would hit him. The night before he had gone about the ridge, deploying each battalion. The 43rd and 52nd Light Infantry were waiting in Sula, out of view of the French, supported by a couple of guns from the Royal Horse Artillery. To their left and right there were brigades of Portuguese infantry, stiffened with British officers and retrained by them.

As the minutes ticked by that morning, it became apparent that Reynier’s attack was going in first, just as Masséna had ordered. These troops clambered up the slope – for in places it is so steep that a heavily laden man will have to help himself with his hands – towards the centre of the line, held by General Picton’s 3rd Division.

Beckwith’s troops could not see the fighting going on in Picton’s sector, but they could certainly hear it. Masséna, on the other hand, had positioned himself near a windmill at Moura and could make out the head of Reynier’s corps mounting the ridge. The battle was going to plan; it was time to hurl Ney forward.

Loison’s division of Ney’s corps marched directly up the Sula road. Another division, under General Maucune, followed somewhat behind and veered off to the left, where a Portuguese brigade under the British general Pack awaited them. As soon as the heads of Loison’s columns were in range, the Rifles and Portuguese began taking shots at them. They had already seen enough of the French Army in action to know the importance of aiming for the officers first.

General Simon, commanding one of the two brigades now coming towards the Light Division, was out in front, having assumed personal
control of the skirmishers. Simon’s six battalions were marching behind in tight, long columns, little more than thirty or forty men across the front of each. The French brigade commander’s aim was to suppress the Rifles, by making them worry more about preserving themselves than about hitting the dense infantry columns. The Rifles, though, had the benefit of height, as they scampered from rock to rock, moving up the ridge ahead of the French, and so could fire over the heads of the
voltigeurs
, picking their targets with ease. Of course, they could not stop the advance of thousands of Ney’s troops – as one 95th officer observed, ‘We must give the French their due and say that no men could come up in a more resolute manner.’

With riflemen starting to scurry back over the lip at the top of the ridge, Craufurd could not contain his curiosity. He would dart to the edge, watching the French, hearing the thumping of their drums and shouts of their officers. Then he would rush back again, making sure that the 43rd and 52nd were aligned just right, ready to receive Loison’s division with a volley and bayonets when its men came into view at last.

Near the top of the ridge, the French found themselves under devilish fire. Craufurd sent more Portuguese light infantrymen from the 3rd
Cacadores
down to help Beckwith. Several guns firing grapeshot had joined in the British barrage, and were cutting down swaths of men. The colonel of the 6
ème Léger
fell to the ground, his head taken clean off by a piece of grape. The French attack was faltering. The officers shouted until they were hoarse, urging the men forward one more time, ‘
En avant! En avant!
’ Simon, who had himself been shot in the face, was close to the Royal Horse Artillery’s guns near Sula: he had to silence the battery. With one last effort, a few score of exhausted, blood-spattered troops followed him over the ridge.

The first French had staggered up in front of Craufurd’s formed battalions as the last riflemen were running, fast as their legs could carry them, to get behind the red-coated wall. The artillery gunners left their pieces, pelting back too. Simon had got his guns. The shout went around the decimated French companies: the guns were captured! But this triumph was to be short-lived indeed.

‘When I saw the head of the French column within about twenty yards of the top of the hill,’ wrote Craufurd, ‘I turned about to the 43rd and 52nd Regiments and ordered them to charge.’ An officer of the 52nd recalled that ‘the head of the enemy’s column was within a
very few yards of [Craufurd], he turned around, came up to the 52nd, and called out, “Now 52nd, revenge the death of Sir John Moore! Charge! Charge! Huzza!” and waving his hat in the air, he was answered by a shout that appalled the enemy and in one instant the brow of the hill bristled with two thousand British bayonets.’

The few French soldiers who had made it to the top never managed to form a firing line, as Masséna had planned. Instead they loosed off a ragged volley at the chargers, but in seconds they were thrown back. Some men were bayoneted, other stumbled, fell and were trodden underfoot. Among those lying wounded on the ridge as the British passed was General Simon himself, who was taken prisoner. The 43rd and 52nd went to the front of the ridge, where they could look down on hundreds of French troops milling about in confusion on the slope. There the British light infantry gave them a thundering volley. The RHA men ran back to their guns and began to serve them again. ‘We kept firing and bayoneting till we reached the bottom,’ wrote an officer of the 52nd.

Many of the Rifles, left behind and watching this maelstrom, now turned to their right and looked up to where Maucune’s brigade was about to suffer the same fate at the hands of Pack’s Portuguese. The Scottish general gave the order to advance. Captain Leach of the 95th wrote home, ‘I was quite hoarse with cheering and hallooing. Whenever we saw the Portuguese about to charge, who were nearly a mile distant, we all set up a howl which undoubtedly spirited them on.’

Captain Marcel, who had led his men to the top, was a small part of Maucune’s brigade. He looked around: where was their support? There was nobody behind the 69
ème
, and looking across to his right, Marcel could see Simon’s brigade, ‘going back down the slope, under a terrible artillery fire and under attack from a column of English of four times its strength [
sic
]; very soon, that same column hit us, and it was our turn to be thrown back.’