BRENNIER’S ESCAPE FROM ALMEIDA. MAY, 1811

The 6th of May went by without any sign of movement on the part of the French. Wellington watched with anxiety for the indications of an extension of the enemy’s front to north or south. But not even a cavalry picket was shown to the right of Nava de Aver, or to the left of Fort Concepcion; reconnaissance on the flank showed that the French remained concentrated in their old positions. It was clearly improbable that Masséna was about to risk another frontal attack: and if, as was more likely, he was intending to try some other way of reaching Almeida than that which runs through Fuentes de O?oro, it was odd that he should not start upon it at once. On the 8th, however, it became obvious that the enemy considered himself beaten, and was already retreating; at dawn it was found that the 6th and 9th Corps had disappeared from in front of Fuentes de O?oro and the entrenched position to its right. Only part of the 2nd Corps was still keeping its ground in front of Alameda. The columns of Drouet and Loison were detected by exploring officers in the woods towards Espeja and Gallegos; Reynier was acting as a covering force to protect their withdrawal, and would have vanished at once if he had been attacked in force.

Masséna, in fact, had only lingered on the fighting-ground during the 6th and 7th in order to organize his retreat. He had ordered the great convoy of food, which had been brought up to Gallegos, to be distributed among the corps, since there was no longer any hope of throwing it into Almeida, and had sent back his artillery caissons to Rodrigo to be refilled. They were not to return, as he intended to pick them up during his retreat. But the main reason why the army had remained near Fuentes for two days was that an effort had been made[p. 350] to communicate with General Brennier by stealth, since force had not availed. By offering a reward of 6,000 francs, the Marshal had succeeded in finding three soldiers who volunteered to attempt to pass through the British lines by night bearing a cipher dispatch. Chance has preserved their names, Zaniboni, Lami, and Tillet. The first two disguised themselves as Spanish peasants, but were both detected and shot as spies. The third, a private in the 6th Léger, retained his uniform and crawled for some miles down the bed of the Dos Casas ravine in the dark, only emerging from it when he got some way beyond Fort Concepcion. From thence he made his way to Almeida before dawn, by creeping on all fours though fields of corn. The dispatch which he bore to the governor directed him to evacuate the place and escape as best he could; he was recommended to try a northerly line, and to make for the bridge of Barba del Puerco, where Reynier’s corps was to be placed from the 8th onward. By taking this route he would avoid the main body of the allied army, as there seemed to be nothing but cavalry vedettes north of Fort Concepcion. Brennier was instructed to acknowledge the receipt of the message, by firing three heavy salvos at five minutes’ intervals from his heaviest guns at 10 o’clock at night. This he did, and it was their sound which enabled Masséna to retreat during the dark hours which followed, with a knowledge that his orders had been received and that the garrison would try to escape. During the next day (May 8th) the 6th and 9th Corps recrossed the Azava and retired to Ciudad Rodrigo. Reynier with the 2nd Corps, moving later, and taking a separate route, marched by the bridge of Barba del Puerco, further down the Agueda, and placed himself at San Felices, just beyond the stream.

Wellington, on seeing the French fall back to their point of starting, thought that Almeida and its garrison were now his own—and so they should have been if his subordinates had acted with common ability. He pushed forward his advanced posts to the Azava and the Agueda in face of the retiring enemy, but sent back the whole 6th Division to relieve Pack’s Portuguese in the task of blockading Almeida. General Campbell took over the command from Pack on the 10th, and disposed his three brigades round the place in what he considered a[p. 351] satisfactory and scientific fashion. It appears, however, that he cantoned them, for convenience sake, much too far out, and neglected the usual precaution of pushing pickets close up to the walls every night, to watch the garrison during the dark hours. The regiments were placed in villages three or four miles from the town, and the connecting screen of pickets between them was thin. Pack’s Portuguese were moved by Campbell to Cinco Villas, four miles north-west of Almeida. Of Burne’s brigade the 2nd regiment was nearest Almeida, on the road that goes out towards the north, the 36th at Malpartida close by. The other British brigade (Hulse’s) was facing the south side of the fortress at a considerable distance; the Portuguese of the division (Madden’s brigade) were at or near Junca on the east front.

Brennier was determined to do his very best to carry out the dangerous task which had been set him. Not only would he carry off his garrison, but he would leave Almeida a wreck behind him. The 8th and 9th of May were employed in driving mines into the whole of the enceinte, and in disabling as much of the artillery as was possible in the time. Some of the pieces were merely spiked, others had their bores choked also; many were disabled by the ingenious plan of firing several pairs of guns simultaneously, with the muzzles of some placed at right angles to those of the others, so that while half the shots flew outwards, the other half struck and disabled the guns against which they were aimed. The besiegers had detected that there was something odd in these salvos, but thought that they were signals to Masséna—as indeed the firing on the night of the 7th had actually been.

At about 11.30 on the night of the 10th, the French came out of the north gate of Almeida in two columns, one formed of the battalion of the 82nd Line, the other of the provisional battalion, artillery, and sappers who formed the larger half of the garrison, which numbered something over 1,300 men. The two columns, which marched close together, parallel with each other, struck the cordon of the blockading line near the point where the pickets of the 1st Portuguese, belonging to Pack’s brigade, joined with those of the 2nd Queen’s of Burne’s. Rushing violently on, they pierced the line, with nothing more than a splutter of musketry from the few Portuguese sentries imme[p. 352]diately opposed to them, who were trampled down or driven off. Five minutes after, a tremendous series of explosions from Almeida startled the whole of the blockading force: the mines left behind by Brennier had worked, and the greater part of the eastern and northern fronts of the place had been blown up. On the south side something had gone wrong with the fuses, and little damage was done: but the fortress was effectively ruined.

Brennier should have been caught if the officers entrusted with the blockade had shown ordinary wisdom, for he was plunging into the midst of 6,000 men, and, if Wellington’s orders had been properly carried out, he could never have reached his destination. The main blame for his successful evasion seems to rest on the shoulders of Colonel Iremonger of the Queen’s regiment, and General Erskine. The former, who was nearest of all the blockading battalions to the point of Brennier’s exit, merely put his men under arms, and sent out patrols both towards Almeida and to right and left. They came back after long delay, reporting that the town seemed to have been evacuated, and that the French had apparently got off to the north and were out of sight. Even at dawn Colonel Iremonger had made no movement, yet his battalion of all the division had the best chance of pursuing the enemy. Erskine’s responsibility is still heavier: he had been directed by a written order, on the afternoon of the 10th, to extend the line of the 4th Division as far as the bridge of Barba del Puerco, and in particular to send the 4th regiment under Colonel Bevan to the rocky defile which overhangs that bridge.[444] Having, apparently, received[p. 353] the dispatch at four o’clock, he detained it (unopened according to some accounts) till long after dusk, when he forwarded directions to the 4th regiment to move to Barba del Puerco. Colonel Bevan, not receiving the order till late at night, took upon himself the responsibility of ordering that the battalion should only move at daybreak. Wherefore there were no troops holding the defile at the critical moment.

For the first few miles of his retreat Brennier was followed only by General Pack, who had caught up eighty men of the main picket of the 1st Portuguese, and hurried after the retreating columns, after sending word to Campbell at Malpartida of the enemy’s general direction. Pack kept up a running fire for several hours, and took many stragglers and all the French baggage; but, by the orders of their commander, the retreating columns did not wait to beat off the teasing force which pursued them, or even fire a shot in return. Towards daybreak Pack found himself near Villa de Ciervo, with only a major and eleven men left in his company, but still close on the heels of the French. In this village there was a troop of the 1st Royals, watching the line of the Agueda; they turned out on hearing the firing, demonstrated against the flying enemy, and detained him for a few useful minutes; but fifty dragoons could do nothing against two battalion columns. However, with the growing light, more British troops were seen hurrying up. General Campbell, on getting Pack’s message, had come on rapidly with the 36th regiment from Malpartida, and was within a mile of Brennier, when the latter turned down to the defile which leads to the bridge of Barba del Puerco. At the same time the 4th, so unhappily absent up to this moment, were perceived approaching from the south, parallel with the course of the Agueda, while a squadron of Barba?ena’s dragoons and some Portuguese infantry were visible in a north-westerly direc[p. 354]tion. If Brennier had allowed himself to be detained for half an hour longer, at any moment in his retreat, he would have been a lost man. But, as it was, his leading column was nearing the bridge before the British got within touch of him.

General Campbell had ordered the 36th to throw off their packs and run, when he saw how close the French were to safety, and the regiment, followed by the 4th, which came up a minute later, struck the second French column just as it was descending to the bridge. Fired upon and charged on the steep road, the battalion broke, and many men, trying to find short cuts down the precipitous hillside, lost their footing, and fell down the rocks. There were some broken necks and many broken limbs, while other fugitives fell into the river and were drowned. Meanwhile a heavy fire was opened on the pursuers from the opposite bank. Reynier, who (as he had been ordered) kept a good watch on the bridge from San Felices, had sent down three battalions of the 31st Léger and some guns to receive the flying garrison. They had lined the bank, and were ready to defend the defile. Colonel Cochrane, of the 36th, without Campbell’s orders, took upon himself to try to force a passage through the covering force, and led a mixed mass of his own regiment and the 4th across the bridge, and up the opposite slope. They were repulsed with loss by the 31st Léger; the casualties in this rash enterprise were the only ones suffered by the British that morning, and amounted to eighteen killed and wounded, and an officer and sixteen men taken prisoners. Pack’s Portuguese had lost some fifteen men when their picket line was forced at midnight, so that the total casualties of the Allies were about fifty.

Brennier’s columns had of course suffered far more—but it was a scandal that a single man had escaped. He states his loss in his report to Marmont at 360 men out of 1,300, of whom over 200 were prisoners and 150 killed or wounded. The commandant de place of Almeida and twelve other officers were taken. Reynier says that when General Campbell had withdrawn his troops from the water’s edge, and up the cliff, out of the range of the French cannon, he sent a party across the bridge to bring in the wounded, and that they found quite a heap of men with broken limbs at the foot of the precipice,[p. 355] whom they dragged out from among the dead and brought back with them. There were some few English and Portuguese in this ghastly pile, who had lost their footing in reckless pursuit of the flying enemy and had fallen with them[445].

Wellington gave it as his opinion that the escape of the garrison of Almeida was ‘the most disgraceful military event’ that had yet occurred to the British army in the Peninsula, and it is easy to understand his wrath. Campbell had been warned that Brennier might very probably attempt to escape; Erskine had been told to guard the defile of Barba del Puerco. The former kept his troops too far back from the place, and so disposed them that there was nothing directly behind the cordon of pickets, at the point where Brennier broke out, save the main-guard of the 1st Portuguese. He also watched the south and west sides of Almeida with unnecessary numbers—for it was unlikely that the governor would choose either of those points for his sortie. But he clearly did his best to pursue when the alarm came, and was the first to appear at Barba del Puerco with the 36th. The colonel of the 2nd regiment was much more to blame than his chief, since he was close to the original point where the French appeared, but merely collected his battalion at its head quarters and made no attempt to pursue. In his exculpatory letter to General Campbell he ‘thinks that he has explained everything satisfactorily[446],’ but he clearly does not show that he made an adequate attempt to face the situation, which demanded a rapid pursuit. An extraordinary chance happened to another regiment of the 6th Division: Colonel Douglas, with the 8th Portuguese, was at Junca, some way to the east of Almeida. He started off at the first alarm, and with proper military instinct marched for Barba del Puerco. Having good guides he reached the bridge before daybreak, but could see nothing of Brennier (who was still some miles away near Villa de Ciervo). Finding the defile all quiet, an............