COMBAT OF THE COA: SIEGE OF ALMEIDA (JULY–AUGUST 1810)

On July 10th the French had entered Ciudad Rodrigo, but ten days more elapsed before they made any further advance. Masséna, who had returned to the front, was resolved to follow his master’s orders and to act ‘methodically.’ It was clearly incumbent on him to begin the siege of Almeida as soon as possible, and, as that place is only twenty-one miles from Ciudad Rodrigo, one long march would have placed him before its walls. But since he had only a few thousand rounds of ammunition left for his heavy guns, he refused to move on till all the available reserves were on their way from Salamanca to the front, and requisition for a further supply had been sent to Bayonne. He had also to do his best to scrape together more food, since the magazines that Ney had collected were nearly exhausted when Rodrigo fell. Moreover, 1,500 draught animals had died during the late siege, and it was necessary to replace them before the Great Park could move forward.

On July 21st, however, some convoys having come up from Salamanca, Masséna directed Ney to advance with the 6th Corps and to drive Craufurd back on to Almeida. The main point that he was directed to ascertain on this day was whether the English intended to make a stand at Fort Concepcion, the isolated Spanish work which faces Almeida on the frontier, beyond the Turones. This was a solid eighteenth-century fort, covering the bridge where the high-road passes the river. It had lately been repaired, and could have resisted a bombardment for some days. But it would have required a garrison of 1,000 men, and, since it lies in the midst of the plain, there would be little chance of relieving it, if once it were surrounded. Wellington, therefore, gave orders that it should be blown up whenever the French should advance in force toward Almeida, and that Craufurd should make no attempt to defend the line[p. 258] of the Turones, and should send back his infantry to Junca, a village about a mile outside the gates of Almeida[296], keeping his cavalry only to the front. On the 21st Ney advanced with the whole of Loison’s division, and Treillard’s cavalry brigade. Thereupon Craufurd, with some reluctance, retired and blew up Fort Concepcion as he went. The French advanced, skirmishing with the 14th Light Dragoons and the German Hussars, but finally halted at Val de Mula, four miles from Almeida. Craufurd established himself at Junca, only three miles from the enemy’s line of pickets. On the next evening he received a strong suggestion, if not quite an order, from his Chief to send his infantry across the Coa. ‘I am not desirous of engaging an affair beyond the Coa,’ wrote Wellington. ‘Under these circumstances, if you are not covered from the sun where you are, would it not be better that you should come to this side of it, with your infantry at least[297]?’ The tentative form of the note well marks the confidence that the Commander-in-Chief was wont to place in his subordinate’s judgement. This time that confidence was somewhat misplaced, for Craufurd tarried two days longer by the glacis of Almeida, and thereby risked a disaster.

It must be remembered that Almeida is not on the Coa, but two miles from it, and that its guns, therefore, did not cover the one bridge over which Craufurd could make his retreat. Indeed, that bridge and the river also are invisible from Almeida. The fortress is slightly raised above the level of the rolling plain, which extends as far as Ciudad Rodrigo: the river flows in a deep bed, so much below the plateau as to be lost to sight. Its ravine is a sort of ca?on which marks the end of the plains of Leon. It has often been remarked that Almeida’s value would have been doubled, if only it had been on the near side of the Coa, and commanded its bridge. But Portuguese kings had built and rebuilt the old fortress on its original site, with no regard for strategy. Craufurd, then, should have remembered that, if he were suddenly attacked in his camp outside the gates, he risked being thrown back into the town (the last thing he would wish), or being hustled down to the bridge and forced to[p. 259] pass his division across it in dangerous haste. But he had so often challenged, held back, and evaded Ney’s and Junot’s advanced guards, that he evidently considered that he was taking no very serious risk in staying where he was. He was, moreover, discharging a valuable function by keeping Almeida from being invested, as stores and munitions were still being poured into the place. The only peril was that he might be attacked both without warning and by overwhelming superiority of numbers, with the defile at his back. Neither of these misadventures had yet happened to him during the four and a half months while he had been defying the 6th and the 8th Corps along the banks of the Agueda. The French had never assailed him with much more than a division, nor had they ever pressed on him with headlong speed, so as to prevent an orderly retreat properly covered by a moderate rearguard.

Now, however, Ney, untrammelled by any other operation, had his whole corps concentrated behind Val de Mula, and having learnt of the defile that lay in Craufurd’s rear, thought that he might be hurled into it and crushed or caught. Before dawn he arrayed his whole 24,000 men in one broad and deep column. Two cavalry brigades, Lamotte’s 3rd Hussars and 15th Chasseurs, and Gardanne’s 15th and 25th Dragoons, were in front. Then came the thirteen battalions of Loison’s division, in a line of columns; behind them was Mermet with eleven battalions more, while three regiments of Marchand’s division (the fourth was garrisoning Ciudad Rodrigo) formed the reserve. In a grey morning, following a night of bitter rain, the French horsemen rode at the British cavalry pickets, and sent them flying helter-skelter across the three miles of rolling ground that lay in front of the Light Division. On hearing the fire of the carbines Craufurd’s men turned out with their accustomed celerity, and in a very short space were aligned to the right of Almeida, with their flank only 800 yards from the glacis, and their front covered by a series of high stone walls bounding suburban fields. There would have been just enough time to get cavalry, guns, and impedimenta across the bridge of the Coa if the General had started off at once. But, not realizing the fearful strength that lay behind the French cavalry advance, he resolved to treat himself to a rearguard action, and not to[p. 260] go till he was pushed. On a survey of the ground it is easy to understand the temptation, for it would be hard to find a prettier battlefield for a detaining force, if only the enemy were in no more than moderate strength. A long double-headed spur runs down from the high plateau on which Almeida stands to the Coa. Successive points of it can be held one after the other, and it is crossed by many stone walls giving good cover for skirmishers. With his left covered by the fire of the fortress, and his right ‘refused’ and trending back towards the river, Craufurd waited to be attacked, intending to give the leading French brigade a lesson. There was a delay of more than an hour before the French infantry was up, but when the assault came it was overwhelming. Craufurd’s line of three British and two Portuguese battalions[298] was suddenly assaulted by Loison’s thirteen, who came on at the pas de charge ‘yelling, with drums beating, and the officers, like mountebanks, running ahead with their hats on their swords, capering like madmen and crying as they turned to wave on their men, “Allons, enfants de la Patrie, le premier qui s’avan?era, Napoléon le recompensera[299].”’ The rolling fire of the British stopped the first rush, when suddenly a French cavalry regiment, the 3rd Hussars, charged across the interval between Craufurd’s left and the walls of Almeida, braving the fire of the ramparts in the most gallant style. Some fell, but the gunners were flurried at this unexpected development, and fired wildly, so that the hussars swept down unchecked on the extreme flank of the Light Division, where a company of the 95th Rifles was annihilated[300], and began riding along the rear of the line and rolling it up. They were luckily checked for a moment by a stone wall, but Craufurd saw that he must retreat at once, since he was turned on the side where he had thought that he was safest. The cavalry and guns were ordered to gallop for the bridge, the[p. 261] Ca?adores to follow them, and the rest of the infantry to fall back in échelon from the left, defending each enclosure and fold of the hillside as long as possible. But it is hard to make an orderly retreat when a foe with twofold strength in his fighting line is pressing hard. Moreover, the road to the bridge has an unfortunate peculiarity; instead of making straight for its goal it overshoots it, in order to descend the slope at an easy point, and then comes back along the river bank for a quarter of a mile. The cavalry and guns, forced to keep to the road because the hillside was too steep for them, had to cover two sides of a triangle with a sharp turn at the apex, which delayed them terribly. To add to the trouble an artillery caisson was upset at a sharp turn, and took much trouble to right and send forward. Thus it chanced that the covering infantry were driven down close to the bridge before the Ca?adores and the last of the guns had crossed the river. The retreat of the three British battalions had been most perilous; at one moment a wing of the 43rd found themselves checked by a vineyard wall ten feet high, while the French were pressing hard on their rear. They only escaped by shoving a long part of it over by sheer strength—fortunately, like all other walls in this part of Portugal, it was made of dry flat stones without mortar. Finally the 43rd, the Rifles, and part of the 52nd were massed on a long knoll covered with pine-trees, which lies above the bridge and completely masks it against an attack from above. While they held firm, Craufurd ranged the guns and the Ca?adores on the slopes upon the other side, so as to command the passage when the rest of the troops should have to cross. He then began to withdraw the 43rd, and part of that battalion had already crossed the water, when five companies of the 52nd, which had occupied the extreme right wing of the division, were seen hastening along the river bank some way above the bridge. They had held out a little too long on the slopes above, and seemed likely to be cut off, for the French, noting their position, made a vigorous effort, and carried the knoll which protected their line of retreat to the point of passage. This was a desperate crisis, but such was the splendid courage and initiative of the regimental officers of the Light Division that the disaster was averted. At one point Beckwith,[p. 262] colonel of the Rifles, at another Major McLeod of the 43rd, called on the disordered mass of men, who had been driven back to the bridge head, to charge again and save the 52nd. The soldiers grasped the situation, cheered and followed; they recaptured the knoll that they had just lost, and held it for ten minutes more, gaining time for the companies of the 52nd to pass behind and cross the bridge. ‘No one present,’ wrote an eye-witness, ‘can fail to remember the gallantry of Major McLeod. How either he or his horse escaped being blown to atoms, while in this daring manner he charged on horseback at the head of some 200 skirmishers of the 43rd and 95th mixed together, and headed them in making a dash at the line of French infantry, whom we dislodged, I am at a loss to imagine. It was one of those extraordinary escapes which tend to implant in the mind some faith in the doctrine of fatality[301].’

The moment that the 52nd were safe, the troops on the knoll evacuated it, and crossed the bridge behind them at full speed, while the French reoccupied the wooded eminence. If Ney had been wise he would have stopped at this moment, and have contented himself with having driven in the Light Division with a loss of 300 men, while his own troops had suffered comparatively little. But, carried away by the excitement of victory, he resolved to storm the bridge, thinking that the British troops were too much shaken and disordered to make another stand, even in a strong position. There were plenty of examples in recent French military history, from Lodi to Ebersberg, where passages had been forced under difficulties as great. Accordingly he ordered the 66th, the leading regiment of Loison’s division, to push on and cross the river. This was a dire mistake: Craufurd already had the Ca?adores in position behind stone walls a little above the bridge, and Ross’s guns placed across the road so as to sweep it from end to end. The British battalions were no sooner across the river than they began to string themselves out behind the rocks and walls, which lie in a sort of small amphitheatre on the slope commanding the passage. The bridge, a two-arched structure seventy yards long, crosses the Coa diagonally, at a point where it is narrowed down between rocks, and flows very fiercely: it was flooded at[p. 263] this moment from the rain of the previous night, and was swelling still, for a tropical storm had just begun and raged at intervals throughout the afternoon. The cavalry, useless at the bridge, was sent up-stream to watch some difficult fords near Alveirenos.

The French 66th, ordered by the Marshal to carry the bridge, formed its grenadiers on the knoll, to lead the column, and then charged at the passage. But the leading company was mown down, before it had got half way across, by a concentrated musketry salvo from the hillside in front, and the enfilading fire of the guns from the right. The column broke, and the men recoiled and dispersed among the rocks and trees by the bank, from whence they opened a fierce but ineffective fire upon the well-sheltered British battalions. Ney, who had now lost his temper, ordered up a bataillon d’élite of light infantry[302] which had distinguished itself at the siege of Ciudad Rodrigo, and told his aide de camp Sprünglin to take the command and cross at all costs[303]. There ensued a most gallant effort and a hideous butchery. The Chasseurs flung themselves at the bridge, and pushed on till it was absolutely blocked by the bodies of the killed and the wounded, and till they themselves had been almost literally exterminated, for out of a battalion of little more than 300 men 90 were killed and 147 wounded in less than ten minutes. A few survivors actually crossed the bridge, and threw themselves down among the rocks at its western end, where they took shelter from the British fire in a little corner of dead ground, but could of course make no further attempt to advance.

[p. 264]

Ney, irritated beyond measure, now bade a mounted officer sound for a ford at a spot above the bridge, where the river spreads out into a broad reach. But horse and man were killed by a volley from the British side, and floated down the swollen stream[304]. Finding the river impracticable, the Marshal again ordered the 66th to go forward: this third attack, delivered without the dash and determination of the first two, was beaten back with little trouble. The firing then died down, and during one of the fierce rainstorms of the late afternoon the few chasseurs who had crossed the bridge ran back and escaped to their own bank. Craufurd held the position that he had occupied till midnight, and then retired on Pinhel. He had lost 333 men only[305], and was fortunate therein, for half his division might have been destroyed if the officers had shown less intelligence and the men less pluck. The French had 527 casualties, four-fifths of them in the mad attempt to force the bridge, in which the colonel of the 66th and fifteen of his officers had fallen, and the battalion of Chasseurs had been practically exterminated[306]. Ney forwarded an honest chronicle of the day’s doings to his chief, which Masséna wrote up, and sent to the Emperor turned into a work of fancy, in which he declared that he had destroyed 1,200 of Craufurd’s men (whom he estimated at 2,000 horse and 8,000 infantry, double their real strength), taken 300 prisoners, a colour, and two guns. Making no mention of the complete check that Loison’s division had suffered at the bridge, he stated that ‘the Imperial troops have shown once again this day that there is no position which can resist their intrepidity.’ He added foolish gossip, ‘Their Estafete-Mor (chief Portuguese courier) has been captured with all his dispatches, in which are several of the 25th and 26th instant, which declare that the English army is in complete rout, that its deplorable state cannot be exaggerated, that the English have never been in such a hot corner, that they[p. 265] have lost sixty officers, of whom they buried twenty-four on the battlefield, about 400 dead and 700 wounded[307].’ Apparently these ‘dispatches’ are an invention of Masséna’s own. It is incredible that any British officer can have written such stuff after a combat of which every man present was particularly proud, and in which the losses had been incredibly small, con[p. 266]sidering the risks that had been run. Four officers, not twenty-four, had been killed, and one made prisoner. Instead of being in ‘complete rout’ the Light Division had retired at leisure and unmolested, without leaving even a wounded man or a single cart behind.

Wellington was justly displeased with Craufurd for accepting this wholly unnecessary combat: if the Light Division had been withdrawn behind the Coa on the 22nd, as he had advised, no danger would have been incurred, and the bridge might have been defended without the preliminary retreat to the water’s edge. Yet so great was the confidence in which Craufurd was held by Wellington, that their correspondence shows no break of cordiality or tension of relations during the ensuing days[308], though unofficially the divisional general was aware that the Commander-in-Chief had disapproved his action, and felt the blame that was unspoken in the keenest fashion[309]. There was another British general involved in a serious degree of culpability on the 24th: this was Picton, who hearing at his post of Pinhel the firing in the morning, rode up to the bridge of the Coa; there he met Craufurd, who was just preparing to resist Ney’s attempt to cross the river. Picton was asked to bring up the 3rd Division in support, which could have been done in less than three hours, but roughly refused, saying apparently that Craufurd might get out of his own scrape. The generals parted after an exchange of some hard words, and Picton rode back to order his division to get ready to retreat, having committed one of the greatest military sins, that of refusing to support a comrade in the moment of danger, because he did not choose to compromise his own troops[310].

[p. 267]

Having cleared the country-side beyond the Coa by pressing back the Light Division, and having ascertained by a reconnaissance that Picton had evacuated Pinhel on the night of the 25th, Masséna was able to sit down to besiege Almeida at his leisure. The investment was assigned to Ney and the 6th Corps, while Junot and the 8th Corps were brought up from the Agueda, and placed in the villages behind and to the right of the besieged place, so as to be able to support Ney at a few hours’ notice. The extreme steepness of the banks of the Coa during its whole course rendered it most unlikely that Wellington would attempt the relief of Almeida by a direct advance. He would have had to force a passage, and the Coa, unlike the Agueda, has very few fords. Its only two bridges, that opposite Almeida, and that higher up at Castello Bom, were held in force by the 6th Corps. The siege however might not improbably prove long. Almeida was in far better repair than Ciudad Rodrigo, and had less defects. The little town is situated on the culminating knoll of an undulating plateau, a very slight eminence, but one which was not commanded by any higher ground as Rodrigo was by the two Tesons. The outline of the place is almost circular, and exactly fits the round knoll on which it stands. It has six bastions, with demi-lunes and a covered way. There is a dry ditch cut in the solid rock, for Almeida lies on a bare granite plateau, with only two or three feet of earth covering the hard stratum below. It was well armed with over 100 guns, forty of which were 18-pounders or still heavier. It had casemates completely proof against bomb fire, and large enough to cover the whole garrison. This, as has been already said, consisted of one regular regiment, the 24th of the Line over 1,200 strong, and the three militia regiments of Arganil, Trancoso, and Vizeu—in all some 4,000 infantry, with a squadron of the 11th cavalry regiment and 400 gunners. The governor was William Cox—an English[p. 268] colonel and a Portuguese brigadier; he had with him five other English officers, all the rest of the garrison being Portuguese. There was an ample store both of food and of ammunition, which Wellington had been pouring in ever since the siege of Ciudad Rodrigo began. Only two serious defects existed in the place: the first was that its glacis was too low, and left exposed an unduly large portion of the walls[311]. The second, a far worse fault, was that the grand magazine was established in a rather flimsy mediaeval castle in the centre of the town, and was not nearly so well protected as could have been desired. Nevertheless Wellington calculated that Almeida should hold out at least as long as Ciudad Rodrigo, and had some hope that its siege would detain Masséna so much that the autumn rains would set in before he had taken the place, in which case the invasion of Portugal would assume a character of difficulty which it was far from presenting in August or September.

For some days after the investment of Almeida had been completed the 6th Corps remained quiescent, and made no attempt to break ground in front of the place. Ney was waiting for the Grand Park and the train, which had now started in detachments from Ciudad Rodrigo, but were advancing very slowly on account of the lack of draught animals. For a moment Wellington thought it possible that the enemy was about to mask Almeida, and to advance into Portugal with his main army without delay[312]. This hypothesis received some support from the facts that Junot had moved up from the Agueda, and that Reynier had shown the head of a column beyond the Pass of Perales. This last appeared a most significant movement; for if the 2nd Corps was about to march up from the Tagus to[p. 269] join Masséna, the deduction was that it was required to join in a general invasion, since it was clear that it was not needed for the mere siege of Almeida. Wellington accordingly wrote to urge Hill to keep a most vigilant eye on Reynier, and to be ready to move up to the Mondego the moment that it was certain that his opponent had passed the Sierra de Gata and linked himself to the main French army. As a matter of fact there was, as yet, no danger from Reynier. The advance of one of his flanking detachments to Navas Frias beyond the Pass of Perales, and a raid made upon Penamacor on July 31 and upon Monsanto on August 1, by another, were pure matters of foraging and reconnaissance. Reynier had no orders to move up his whole force to join Masséna, and was only amusing himself by demonstrations. His actions became most puzzling to Wellington when, a few days later, he called back all the troops that had moved northward, and concentrated his force at Zarza la Mayor, on the road to Castello Branco, so as to threaten once more to invade Central Portugal by the line of the Tagus. This was no device of his own, but the result of a dispatch from Masséna dated July 27, ordering him to keep more to the south for the present, to threaten Abrantes, and to afford Hill no chance of joining Wellington.

Reynier’s feints meanwhile had given Hill some trouble; the appearance of a northward move on the part of his adversary had caused the British general to make ready for a parallel march on Fund?o and Guarda, so as to connect himself with his chief. He transferred his head quarters first from Castello Branco to Sarzedas, and then from Sarzedas to Atalaya, at the foot of the pass that leads to the Mondego valley, intending to cross the mountains the moment that Reynier had passed over the Perales defiles with his main body. But seeing the 2nd Corps unexpectedly turning back and concentrating at Zarza, Hill also retraced his steps, and lay at Sarzedas again from August 3rd till September 21st, with his advanced guard at Castello Branco and his cavalry well out to the front along the Spanish frontier, watching every movement of the 2nd Corps. During this time of waiting the Portuguese cavalry of his division had two small but successful engagements with Reynier’s horse, of whom they cut up a squadron on the 3rd of[p. 270] August near Penamacor and another on the 22nd at Ladoeiro, when two officers and sixty men of the Hanoverian Chasseurs à Cheval were killed or taken[313].
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