SEVEN
Early in the morning of 27 September, the voltigeurs of the 69ème 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:
Their generals could observe all our movements and even count the number of files. Their reserves were hidden on the other side of the mountain. They could concentrate strong masses in less than half an hour, on any attacked point, while the French needed an hour even to get to their outposts, and during that passage would find themselves exposed to grapeshot and musketry from a multitude of skirmishers hidden among the rocks.
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 69ème 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 69ème 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 6ème 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 69ème, 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.’
For the Light Division men and Pack’s Portuguese, weeks of retreating across muddy, execrable roads were being paid back: their blood lust was up. Ney’s corps suffered almost 2,500 casualties that day, with Simon’s brigade losing the most. Elsewhere, the initial attack by Reynier’s corps had met the greatest success: its columns had reached the plateau at the highest point of the ridge and begun to deploy, and only a countercharge by Picton’s division had managed to turn the tide.
On the slope in front of Sula it was impossible to say exactly who had lost his life to the 95th, and who to the 52nd or indeed the Portuguese. But it is clear that the six battalions taken forward by Simon suffered terrible casualties among their officers. The LégionHanovrienne had nine of them killed or wounded, including eight of its twelve company commanders. The 26ème Régiment had twenty-one officer casualties (a little under half of those present with its two battalions). Ferey’s brigade, which had tried to follow Simon up the hill, also suffered badly: Colonel Bechaud of the 66ème, for example, having recovered from his chest wound in July at the Coa, received the same compliment at Busaco. These losses among leaders were the telltale symptom of well-aimed fire.
Busaco, despite this, was a fight in which traditional notions might have seemed, to a British general of conservative cast, to have given Wellington his triumph: devastating volleys at point-blank range and bayonet charges delivered with perfect timing. Even the laurels for successful skirmishing had to be shared between the 95th, Portuguese Cacadores and the light companies of various line battalions. The French, though, deduced a general lesson from their officer casualties: that, in the words of one staff officer, ‘the English were the only troops who were perfectly practised in the use of small arms, whence their firing was much more accurate than that of any other infantry.’ They had become ‘the best marksmen in Europe’. That this had come about could be attributed in large part to the training pioneered by the 95th’s founders and the growing influence of the system developed before the Peninsular War by General Sir John Moore at Shorncliffe – even the Cacadores had fallen under it, for they had been retrained by British officers, including several of the 95th.
If Beckwith and the other officers of the 95th had only a general idea of how well they had picked off the French commanders, they certainly knew that their own losses had been slight: just nine men killed and thirty-two wounded in the battalion. None of the casualties had been officers. Simon’s skirmishers had made a great deal of noise and smoke as they came up the mountain, but their effect on the crouching riflemen had been minimal. Concealment was an important factor in this, for the riflemen had become expert in this, whereas other regiments, such as the Portuguese light troops, were less experienced and so suffered more heavily. But there was something else at work here too. Just as the British Army might have its idées fixes about the bayonet or flogging, so the French had been blunted in their effectiveness by their generals’ received wisdoms about rifles and target shooting.
The French did not want to issue rifles to their men. A small-scale experiment had ended in 1807, the weapons being hard to load and their barrels fouling too easily (since they were of inferior design to the British Baker). The French also considered the rifle a very suspect thing if it just caused the soldier to sit, trying to pick off his enemy at long range, rather than close with him and decide the matter by bayonet. Napoleon’s generals understood why such a weapon might be of use in the hands of an American frontiersman, a German forester or even an Englishman, but it would not do for their own people, ruled in war as in so many other matters by Gallic passion. One leading French theorist summed up the aversion to the rifle: ‘It was an unsuitable weapon for the French soldier, and would only have suited phlegmatic, patient, assassins.’
Napoleon’s light infantry carried instead the fusil de dragons, a smoothbore musket slightly shorter than that of the rest of the infantry, and originally designed for mounted troops. As for the whole business of aiming, the French were in something of a muddle. The fusil had a fore-sight, a metal blade close to its muzzle, but no back-sight with which to align it. What’s more, conscripts like Sub-Lieutenant Marcel’s received no training in marksmanship. They pointed at their targets all right, but were self-taught in the business of aiming, that is, adjusting their fire to take account of the distance and movement of their prey. By Busaco some French officers were beginning to appreciate the cost of this neglect.
At the siege of Ciudad Rodrigo just a few months before, one of the more professional French generals present had been staggered by the poor shooting of Ney’s infantry. Writing to Paris in order to request an urgent shipment of musket cartridges, he wrote:
The consumption of this munition is quite incredible; it has happened through the inexperience and the negligence of the soldiers, by the carelessness of officers and by the numerous detachments marching with convoys of supplies and munitions. The siege of Rodrigo has seen the consumption of more than nine hundred thousand infantry cartridges solely by skirmishers.
This enormous expenditure of ammunition occurred in one month by light companies whose combined strength did not amount to more than a couple of thousand of Ney’s corps. It might be supposed that Marcel’s men and the other voltigeurs firing off so many rounds might have become first-rate marksmen, but actually the effect was more haphazard. While some did indeed become good shots, others never grasped the basic principles of adjusting their fire.
Despite these apparently basic limitations, Napoleon’s light troops had gained a considerable reputation in the wars of the previous decade. Audacious command and high morale had generally more than compensated for their poor shooting. However, from Busaco onwards, quite a few French officers realised that they were condemmed to fight the British skirmishers at a considerable disadvantage, one that arose from their lack of systematic marksmanship training.
Masséna’s defeat came as a profound shock to his people. One eyewitness lamented the army’s ‘enormous loss of officers’. For the marshal, any hope of hurling the British out of Portugal began to falter. On 28 September, Wellington returned to his old tricks, falling back towards his prepared lines of defence at Torres Vedras. The French could not understand his lack of aggression. Why wasn’t he following up his success of the day before? But the British general only liked to give battle on terms of his own choosing. He had succeeded in causing Masséna almost 4,500 casualties and was now inviting an army that had failed to carry the heights of Busaco to come and try its luck against the trenchworks and batteries of Torres Vedras. There Masséna would have to deal with the psychological impact of the Busaco defeat, one staff officer commenting, ‘Our heavy losses at Busaco had chilled the ardour of Masséna’s lieutenants, and bred ill-will between them and him; so that now all were trying to paralyse his operations, and representing every little hillock to be a new height of Busaco the capture of which would cost copious bloodshed.’
The battle was an enormous relief for Craufurd. He had been despondent after the Combat of the Coa but even he probably did not understand that he had been a whisker away from being sent home. In his official Busaco dispatch, Wellington praised Craufurd for conducting a fighting withdrawal to the Busaco position, ‘with great regularity’, and for the bayonet charge which had caused the enemy ‘immense loss’.
Wellington’s Army had performed very well in a general action, the first of its kind since Talavera more than a year before. But whereas the losses at Talavera had been great, this was a more emphatic victory. British officers took pride in throwing back regiments that were veterans of France’s fabled triumphs in Italy or central Europe: the fields of Lodi, Marengo and Austerlitz where Napoleon had made his reputation. A company commander of the 95th walked about in the dusk of that September day gathering buttons from the coats of the French dead strewn across the hillside so that he might ascertain their regiments and therefore their pedigree. He was perfectly satisfied with what he found, writing home, ‘The 26th, 66th and 82nd are Bridge of Lodi boys, but of the heights of Busaco I daresay they will be less proud.’