Rifles: Six Years With Wellington's Legendary Sharpshooters (8 page)

In the great scheme of the wars sweeping Europe, the fighting at Barba del Puerco was little more than a minor affair of the outposts. But for many of the men who had set sail on 25 May 1809, it was their first real test.

A certain guilty self-justification showed through, as some officers reflected upon why Ferey had made the attempt. Had the drunken carousing of the 95th’s officers alienated the locals to such an extent that they had spied for the French? Several suspected the village priest, who had shown a surly disdain for these goings-on. One officer speculated that the padre must have told Ferey ‘that the English officers in his village were in the habit of getting blind drunk every night and that he only had to march over at midnight to secure them almost without resistance’.

Simmons, though, had nothing to feel guilty about. He glowed in the days afterwards with all the self-assurance of a man who had confronted mortal danger for the first time and done his duty, writing that ‘after this night I was considered a soldier fit to face the devil in any shape’. From that day on, O’Hare’s attitude to Simmons changed profoundly, for the young subaltern had passed the only test his captain really cared about. ‘My captain’, Simmons breathlessly wrote home to his parents, ‘was pleased to say my conduct had given him the greatest satisfaction.’ Nobody knew how long the campaign would last – in fact many expected that the French would bring overwhelming numbers into Portugal soon afterwards – but at least these companies of the Rifles had shown what they were made of.

Those officers who remained at Shorncliffe camp with the 2nd and 3rd battalions were delighted at the news that filtered back in letters and official dispatches. One wrote of Barba del Puerco: ‘we … looked upon it as no inconsiderable addition to our regimental feather … with something less than half their number they had beaten off six hundred of the elite of the French Army’.

This little battle had also tested Craufurd’s line of observation posts and shown the wisdom of his calculations. Craufurd circulated an ecstatic order to his battalions, relaying Wellington’s pleasure in the outcome. But Craufurd also wanted to thumb his nose at those who had doubted what a Rifle regiment might achieve on service:

This was a key point for apostles of the new light weapons and tactics. Those light soldiers that Craufurd had seen during his European campaigns would not have been expected to stand their ground against storm troops, particularly if armed with an esoteric weapon like the rifle, one that was seen by some officers and theorists as slow to load and difficult to use. At Barba, the riflemen had shown they could load as fast as any musketman and withstand a close assault too.

In the days after Barba, Craufurd exploited his new standing with Wellington to the fullest extent possible. He pursuaded the Commander of Forces to place more troops under his command: a troop of guns (meaning six pieces) of the Royal Horse Artillery, two battalions of Portuguese light infantry, more cavalry. With these reinforcements Craufurd converted the Light Brigade into a Light Division. He formed two brigades: the 1st or Right Brigade would consist of half of the 95th (known as Right Wing of the battalion) and the 43rd Light Infantry; the 2nd or Left Brigade would have the Left Wing of the 95th as well as the 52nd Light Infantry. The Portuguese battalions would either work together as their own brigade, or one battalion would be attached to each of the British brigades.

The losses of Barba del Puerco and, more significantly, of Guadiana fever and the many long marches of previous months caused Beckwith to change the structure of his battalion too. Two companies, the 9th and 10th, were disbanded. Some officers and NCOs (generally older, worn-out men) were sent home to recruit, and their rank and file were placed under the captains that were staying in the Peninsula. Right Wing and Left Wing would thus consist of four companies each.

Having built up his little military empire and proved his outpost line, Craufurd also began to lobby Wellington for more exciting missions – some escapades that might show him and his battalions to advantage. The brigadier moved some of his red-coated light infantry companies forward a little, closer to the Coa, and began sending schemes to Headquarters for various raids into no man’s land. He hoped to cut off some French foraging parties, some of which moved about in groups of hundreds of men, and take them prisoner.

Spring comes late in the Beira uplands: those who subsist on that high plateau must often wait until May for the incessant rains of winter to give way to its flowerings. As the seasons changed, so the number of French troops moving about the plateau grew. One of Napoleon’s most able marshals, Michel Ney, arrived with his 6th
Corps to encircle the nearby Spanish fortress of Ciudad Rodrigo. The French intended to take it by regular approaches: trenches and breaching batteries, leading eventually to a storm. With many thousands of troops now supporting this operation, the meagre resources of the frontier were soon picked bare, and Ney’s foraging parties began going out in wider circles. Since Spanish guerrillas patrolled the hills, murdering French stragglers without ceremony, they could not scavenge supplies in small groups.

Wellington batted away a series of proposed operations by Craufurd. Eventually, though, the brigadier set off regardless, and on 11 July, Craufurd led a mixed force of Rifles, light infantry and cavalry to surprise a French foraging party of about two hundred infantry and a few dozen cavalry.

This little combat, at a place called Barquilla, was mismanaged by Craufurd. He held the infantry back and tried to defeat the French with cavalry alone. The enemy formed square and saw off repeated attacks. The British cavalry limped home, having lost several men, and the French party made it back to Ciudad Rodrigo, its commander receiving the
Légion d’honneur
for his stubborn resistance.

Resentment of Craufurd simmered once again in his battalions. One of his own staff commented, ‘Craufurd cruelly tried to cut up a handful of brave men, and they thrashed him.’ Many of the party considered that sending several hundred cavalry against the French had been a sort of sadistic experiment on Craufurd’s part – to see whether such a small group of infantry could defend themselves effectively against cavalry. They also speculated whether their commander was seeking such engagements purely to buttress his own reputation. But Marshal Ney was not the man to meddle with if you just wanted a few glorious mentions in dispatches: the affair at Barquilla would prove a portent of a far more costly humiliation for Craufurd, little over a fortnight later.

The 95th’s pickets greeted first light, that 24 July, with the heartfelt relief of men who have endured a sleepless and rain-sodden night. Their duty was a difficult one, for they knew that Marshal Ney’s 6th Corps lay just in front of them. The snoozing men behind depended entirely on their outlying sentinels for their safety. For several days, the Light Division had been manoeuvring about the plateau between the Coa and Agueda rivers, often glimpsing the French and firing into their forward scouts. Ney had taken Ciudad Rodrigo by assault and, having secured this fortress, everybody now expected him to move into Portugal.

Craufurd had posted his division so that it might cover the withdrawal of some supplies from Almeida. These wagons would have to be taken from the Portuguese stronghold, which would be Ney’s next target, two and a half miles down the road. Craufurd’s battalions ran from north, just by the walls of the fortress, to south, where they were close to the only line of withdrawal across that difficult obstacle. From top to bottom they went: 43rd, closest to Almeida; 3rd (Portuguese)
Cacadores
; 1st
Cacadores
; 52nd. These Portuguese were clad in brown uniforms and had been trained to perform the same skirmishing tactics as the division’s British troops. They were also being equiped with the Baker rifle, although there never proved enough for all of these rangers to have one. Apart from the sprinkling of British officers who led them, the
Cacadores
were generally stocky, black-haired, olive-skinned and enjoyed their own amusements. In bivouacs they would laugh and halloo into the night, gambling over cards, and they returned the suspicious glances of Craufurd’s British soldiers with interest.

The Rifles covered the front of this line of battalions: the 1st
Company manned the outlying picket in the northern half, the 2nd Company (Leach’s) the southern. Behind them, close in to the main resting place, was a second line of lookouts, the inlying picket in the northern part of the line, which was manned by O’Hare’s 3rd Company. The remainder of the battalion was sleeping, but fully clothed as usual, just behind their pickets, ready to act in support. These men slumbered under their greatcoats or blankets in a warren of little enclosures, bounded by stone walls, where the locals grew their grapes, apples and olives.

As the sun began to warm the air, the ground returned a little of the night’s downpour to the atmosphere in a heavy mist that hung thickest in the hollows. Craufurd’s pickets stoked their fires and got going with a morning brew. Some riflemen came around with dry cartridges in case the rain had spoiled those in the sentries’ pouches. In the main part of the Rifles’ bivouac the reveille bugles had sounded, and captains were beginning to form their companies, calling out the muster roll.

All of these telltale sounds travelled through the mist to the French scouts who were working their way across the upland. Marshal Ney had prepared himself for a tough contest. The spearhead of his force was made up of the
Tirailleurs de Siège,
light infantry picked from several regiments, who had formed into a special battalion weeks before, while Ney was attacking the fortress of Rodrigo. They would move forward with cavalry on their flanks and columns of infantry some distance behind.

With the morning mist burning off, the riflemen on picket began to realise the magnitude of their crisis. One of the 95th’s subalterns noted: ‘As the morning fog cleared away we observed the extensive plains in our front covered with the French Army as far as the eye could reach.’ The alarm was given and roll-call broken off in the main bivouac, as men packed away their gear, took up their arms and began lining the stone walls of the orchards and vineyards where they had slept.

Ney was moving with twenty-five thousand troops on the four thousand or so of Craufurd’s Light Division. The crackling of musketry between the leading
voltigeurs
and the rifle picket announced that the action was beginning. For weeks, the better-informed men of Wellington’s army had been worrying about the risks of keeping the Light Division east of the Coa. Major Charles Napier, a clever officer attached to Craufurd’s staff, had written in his journal on 2 July: ‘If the
enemy was enterprising we should be cut to pieces … we shall be attacked some morning and lose many men.’ On 16 July, disturbed that they had still not withdrawn, he wrote: ‘Why do we not get on the other side of the Coa? … our safety has certainly been owing to the enemy’s ignorance of our true situation.’ Wellington himself had echoed these views, with orders to Craufurd not to risk a battle with the rest of the British Army across the Coa and therefore unable to support him.

As the French brigades marched forward that morning of 24 July, drums beating, Craufurd had one more chance. It would still take time – perhaps even an hour or two – for Ney to bring up the columns of his main force and shake them into their battle line, ready for the assault. All the time the drums sent their repetitive signal – a refrain the riflemen nicknamed ‘Old Trousers’. This could allow the Light Division to get away – for even the 43rd, furthest from the bridge, were not much more than two miles from it. Craufurd decided to stand. He sent his aide-de-camp, Major Napier, around the battalion commanders, telling them they must hold their ground while some wagons of artillery ammunition and other supplies were taken across the bridge.

Seeing hundreds of French skirmishers moving up through the rocky terrain, the outlying pickets began running back towards their supports – some were cut off, the French bagging their first prisoners. O’Hare’s company was formed up, rifles rested on stone walls, ready to give covering fire to the pickets running towards them. As they caught sight of the first Frenchmen, bobbing and ducking among the trees and drystone walls, they started finding their targets, leading them, squeezing the trigger and watching them drop with a yelp or a slap of metal on flesh. But these
tirailleurs
were no recruits. They moved with a mutual confidence born of years of campaigning, timing their dash from one bit of cover to another during moments when they calculated their enemy would be reloading. Some were good shots too: Lieutenant Coane, falling wounded with a ball in his guts, was sent to the rear.

This contest between light troops had been going on for an hour when the main assault columns closed up and began their evolution into attack formation. Simmons observed: ‘The enemy’s infantry formed line and, with an innumerable multitude of skirmishers, attacked us fiercely; we repulsed them; they came on again, yelling with
drums beating, frequently with the drummers leading, often in front of the line, French officers like mountebanks running forward and placing their hats on their swords and capering about like madmen.’

A company or two of Rifles, totalling perhaps 120 men, would stand no hope of defending themselves against whole battalions of French, each one four times their number. Ney’s men had been able to get some of the cannon up too, and they were beginning to belch fire. O’Hare knew that his boys would be slaughtered or overwhelmed if they did not fall back. He ordered half his company, Lieutenant Coane’s platoon (under Simmons now), to move to a new defensive line, while Lieutenant Johnston’s covered them.

Craufurd’s line could defend itself better for as long as its flanks were anchored; the left or northern one on Almeida fortress, with its heavy artillery, the right on the Coa gorge. As the Rifles were pushed back, though, the French commanders could see a gap opening on the British left. Some squadrons of the 3
ième Hussards
saw their moment and rode around the riflemen, turning the Light Division’s flank.

The moment soldiers realised they had been outflanked, there was every risk of panic. A cry of ‘The French cavalry are upon us!’ went up around O’Hare’s company. They were running now, desperate to save themselves, glancing over their shoulders, gasping for breath as the cantering hussars got closer. The riflemen were trying to reach a line of the 43rd that had formed up, ready to cover them. But with little more than a hundred yards to go, O’Hare’s men lost their unequal contest with horses. The hussars were among them.

A slashing of cavalry sabres had begun, the crunch of metal on bone making itself heard above the general shouting, shooting and jingle of saddlery. ‘A fellow brandished his sword in the air, and was about to bring it down upon my head,’ Simmons wrote. ‘I dropped mine seeing it was useless to make resistance. He saw I was an officer and did not cut me.’ O’Hare’s men were starting to surrender.

The officer commanding the three companies of the 43rd, watching all this, knew he could not easily order a volley. That might kill as many British as it would the enemy hussars. But he decided, after a moment’s agony, that there was nothing to be lost. His men fired – not a bludgeon volley like some line fellows might, but a discharge in which his soldiers tried to put their training to good use and aim carefully at a target.

With balls flying into the mêlée, the hussars were momentarily
stunned. Captain Vogt, one of their squadron commanders, fell dead from the saddle. Should they attempt a charge on the 43rd or fall back? Simmons and some of the other riflemen decided they had not surrendered after all, and taking advantage of the confusion, ran for the 43rd’s line. The volley had not altogether discriminated between friend and foe – Private Charity, for example, somehow made it back with Simmons despite two fearsome sabre wounds and one of the 43rd’s balls rattling around in him.

Some Portuguese gunners in the fortress who’d seen the fighting had realised the dangers of Craufurd’s flank being turned and opened up with their heavy guns. They mistook the darkly dressed riflemen for enemy so the balls, alas, killed without discriminating between the French and the 95th.

At its northern end, Craufurd’s line was crumbling. But it was being assaulted at its other extreme too, by none other than General Ferey and his brigade, who gave the 52nd a heavy fight.

The 43rd and 95th being driven back, all order was beginning to vanish – men of the two battalions and different companies became mixed as they jogged along. One of the Portuguese battalions started to disintegrate, hundreds of its troops deciding to save themselves by running back to the bridge. As these fugitives reached the defile, they pushed past the last few wagons of ammunition, causing a general jam.

Breathless, their mouths bone-dry through the biting of cartridges and hours of exertion, the riflemen dragged themselves across one stone wall after another. The French followed up determinedly: ‘They sent their light infantry in abundance like swarms of bees and they were regularly relieved by fresh troops so that our poor devils not only laboured under the disadvantage of numbers but fresh men, who hunted us down the mountains like deer.’

The fighting had been going on for hours, as men of the 95th and 43rd stumbled towards the bridge. A couple of knolls stood overlooking the crossing, with the rocky ground sloping steeply down to it. The road from Almeida needed to zigzag to negotiate this last tricky drop down to the span. From this vantage point, Lieutenant Colonel Beckwith could see that the battle had reached a crisis. The bridge was clogged with wagons and men, while the French were just a few hundred yards from it. The 43rd and companies of 95th that were with it were best positioned to hold the heights as these last men crossed, but to his horror, Beckwith realised that the the 52nd was still fighting far
out to the front, evidently having received no order to withdraw, and was about to be cut off. Beckwith saw Major Napier nearby and ordered him to get through to the 52nd and tell Colonel Barclay to fall back to the bridge without a moment’s delay.

Private Costello was among those scrambling back towards the bridge when he took a bullet under the right knee. Another rifleman answered his cries for help, picked up Costello and staggered forward with the wounded man piggyback. Crack! Another ball – it smashed its way through the Good Samaritan’s arm and into Costello’s thigh. Both men went down. Costello’s saviour was now unable to carry him, for one arm hung bloody and useless at his side. Both of them staggered on, getting the help of some other riflemen.

With the elements of the Light Division that remained on the eastern bank of the Coa having contracted their line from one a couple of miles long at the start of the business to one of a few hundred yards, the French companies that pursued them began firing to much greater effect. Leach explains it in a letter home: ‘Now the fire began (as you may naturally fancy) to be cursedly hot from the French because the nearer we drew to the bridge, the more we concentrated and from behind every wall and rock they directed their fire at the bridge and its vicinity.’

The French forced back the troops on top of the knolls overlooking the bridge, and once their shooters were lining that vital ground, the predicament of the defenders became truly desperate. Balls were whistling about the ears of the riflemen, ricocheting dementedly off rocks, whining into the air. Every now and then there’d be the slap of a bullet hitting flesh and the cry of another man going down. Two of Leach’s subalterns, brothers called Harry and Tom Smith, sank moments apart, both with leg wounds. Lieutenant Pratt fell, a ball having gone straight through his neck, splashing blood all over the rocks. Many of the riflemen had been firing for hours and could not reply: they had run out of ammunition. If the French wheeled a couple of guns up to the ridge, the British would be massacred.

Sensing the danger, Major Charles MacLeod of the 43rd rode his horse up the steep slope, its hooves somehow planting themselves between the big stones, and called on the men to follow him. About two hundred Green Jackets and redcoats fell in behind, bayonets fixed, determined to drive the French skirmishers off the knolls from which they were doing such slaughter. Second Lieutenant George Simmons
was among them, rallying some of the few remaining 3rd Company men with him.