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Home The Napoleonic War, 1803-1815 The Peninsular War and the Fall of Napoleon, 1809-1814 1809-1814; Part 2 |
1809-1814; Part 2Wellesley had as his opponents in the Peninsular War generals trained by Napoleon, who pursued tactics that had been eminently successful when employed by that master of the art of war. Briefly, Napoleon's tactics at this time were to concentrate his artillery fire upon the point selected for attack; and then to throw at the weak spot either a great mass of cavalry or else a great mass of infantry in columns of nine, eighteen, or, as at Waterloo, twenty-four deep, the columns being preceded by a cloud of nimble skirmishers who occupied the enemy's attention. Wellesley's genius, however, was equal to these tactics. First, in order to preserve his troops from the enemy's fire, he kept his troops till the last possible moment out of sight - behind a wall, for instance, or the crest of a hill. Secondly, when the French cavalry charged, he relied on the solidity of a British square. But when he was fighting the French infantry column, he had his men in line, two deep. This formation, so long as it remained steady, had great advantages; through its length it could outflank the enemy, and it could pour at a closely massed column a deadly fire to which only the leading files of a column could reply (Wellesley took care to prevent his own line being outflanked, and protected it in front by a powerful line of skirmishers, so that the skirmishers of the enemy should not harass it). The British line would fire one or two volleys at short range, so short that the soldiers often waited to see the white of their enemies' eyes before firing. They would follow up this attack with a bayonet charge before the enemy had time to recover, and then retire to await a fresh charge from the forces opposed to them.Wellesley made his presence felt immediately after his arrival in Portugal in 1809. He found his enemies superior in numbers but divided. Marching eighty miles in three and a half days, he crossed the Douro, drove Soult out of Oporto, and chased him into Spain. Then he passed over the Spanish frontier, and in combination with a Spanish army turned upon another French general in the valley of the Tagus. But the slackness of the Spanish general and the arrival of French reinforcements forced him, after winning a two days' battle at Talavera, to retire into Portugal instead of advancing upon Madrid. In Portugal for a time Wellesley had to act on the defensive. Napoleon had poured huge reinforcements into Spain and the Spanish armies had suffered severe defeats. And then the French, under Massena, invaded Portugal in 1810 to drive "the English leopard into the sea". |
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