Hitherto we have been confining our outlook on Wellington’s tactics to his use of infantry. But a few words must be added as to his methods of handling the other two arms—cavalry and artillery. There are fortunately one or two memoranda of his own which enable us to interpret his views on the use of these arms, which were to him mainly auxiliary; for the epigram that he was “essentially an infantry general” is in the main correct, though it needs some comment and explanation. In the early part of his Peninsular campaigning he was forced to be an “infantry general,” since the home government kept him unreasonably short in the matter of horsemen and guns till the year 1811 was far spent. Moreover, the ground over which he had to fight in 1809–10–11 must be considered.

The Iberian Peninsula may from the point of view of the cavalry tactician be divided into two sets of regions, in the one of which the mounted arm is all-important, while in the other it may, almost without exaggeration, be described as well-nigh negligible as an element of military strength, being only usable on a small scale, for exploration and observation, and not being able to be employed effectively in mass.

To the first-named class of regions, the tracts eminently suitable for the employment of cavalry, belong the great plateau of Central Spain, the broad arable plains of Old Castile and Leon, from Burgos to Ciudad Rodrigo and from Astorga to Aranda. Here, in a gently undulating upland, little enclosed, and mainly laid out in great common-fields, cavalry has one of the suitable terrains that can be found for it in Europe—as favourable as Champagne, or the lowlands of Northern Germany. This is also, almost to the same extent, the case with the loftier and less cultivated plateau of New Castile, and with the melancholy thinly peopled moors of La Mancha and Estremadura, where the horseman may ride ahead for twenty or thirty miles without meeting any serious natural obstacle, save at long intervals the steep cleft of a ravine, dry in summer, full of a fierce stream in winter. Nor are the great central uplands the only tracts of Spain where cavalry finds an admirable field for operations: the central valley of the Ebro in Aragon, and the whole of the broad plain of the Guadalquivir in Andalusia, are equally suited for the employment of the mounted arm, on the largest scale. Napoleon, therefore, was entirely justified when he attached a very large proportion of horse to his Army of Spain, and when he uttered his dictum that great portions of it must inevitably be the possession of the general who owned the larger and the more efficient mass of squadrons.

On the other hand, there are large tracts of the Peninsula where cavalry is almost as useless as in Switzerland or Calabria. Such are the whole Pyrenean tract on the north, extending from Catalonia, by Aragon and Navarre, to the Asturian and Galician lands along the southern shore of the Bay of Biscay. It will be remembered that, during the Pyrenean Campaign of 1813, Wellington sent back very nearly all his cavalry to the plain of the Ebro, while Soult left his in the plain of the Adour. Sir John Moore’s small but fine cavalry force was useless to him in the Corunna retreat, when once Astorga had been passed, and the Galician mountains entered. He sent it on before him, with the exception of a squadron or two kept with the rear-guard. Soult’s more numerous mounted force, in that same campaign, was only useful in picking up Moore’s stragglers, and keeping the British continuously on the march—it was brought to a dead stop every time that the retreating army showed an infantry rear-guard, and stood at bay in one of the innumerable Galician defiles.

There is another tract of the Peninsula almost as unsuited as the Pyrenean and Galician highlands for the use of cavalry—and that is Portugal, where so much of Wellington’s earlier campaigning took place. Deducting some coast plains of comparatively small extent, all Northern and Central Portugal is mountainous—not for the most part mountainous on a large scale, with high summits and broad valleys, but mountainous on a small scale with rugged hills of 2000 or 3000 feet, between which flow deeply-sunk torrents in narrow ravines—where roads are all uphill and downhill and a defile occurs every few miles. It was the character of this countryside which made Wellington’s army of 1810–11, with its very small cavalry force—only seven British and four or five Portuguese regiments—safe against MassÉna’s immensely preponderant number of squadrons. All through the long retreat from Almeida to the lines of Torres Vedras the allied army could never be caught, turned, or molested; the cavalry on both sides was only employed in petty rear-guard actions, in which the small force brought the larger to a check in defiles, and generally gave back only when the invader brought up infantry to support his attack. For all the good that it did him, MassÉna might have left his 7000 cavalry behind him when he entered Portugal—a few squadrons for exploration was all that he needed. Jammed in narrow defiles, where they were helpless, his mounted men were often more of an incumbrance than a help to him.

On the other hand, when the slopes of the Portuguese mountains were once left behind, Wellington was forced to be most cautious, and to restrict his action to favourable ground (as at Talavera, and Fuentes d’OÑoro) so long as the enemy was hopelessly superior in his number of squadrons. It was only after 1811, when his cavalry regiments were about doubled in numbers, that he could venture down into the plains, and deliver great battles in the open like Salamanca—the first engagement which he ever fought in the Peninsula where his cavalry was not inferior by a third or even a half to that of the French.

Beside the Pyrenean regions and Portugal, there are other districts of the Peninsula where the cavalry arm is handicapped by the terrain—Catalonia for example, where the inland is one mass of rugged valleys, the coastland of the kingdom of Granada, and the great ganglion of mountain lands where Aragon, Valencia, and New Castile meet. But as these were tracts where the British army was little engaged, I pass them over with a mention. But it must also be remembered that each of the great upland plateaux of Spain—Leon, New Castile, La Mancha, and Estremadura, is separated from the others by broad mountain belts, where the Spanish guerillero bands made their headquarters, and rendered communication between plain and plain difficult and perilous.

In such a country of contrasts, how did the various combatants use their mounted men during the six long years between Vimeiro and Toulouse? What was the relative value of the different national cavalry, and what were its tactics for battle and for the equally important work of exploration, and of the covering and concealing the movements of the other arms?

French cavalry tactics had, by 1808, when the war began, developed into as definite a system as those of the infantry. Napoleon was fond of massing his horsemen in very large bodies, and launching them at the centre no less than at the flank of the army opposed to him. In the times of Marlborough and of Frederic the Great cavalry was almost always drawn up in long lines on the wings, and used first for the beating of the hostile containing cavalry, and then for turning against the unprotected flank of the enemy’s infantry in the centre. A cavalry dash at a weak point in the middle of the hostile front was very rare indeed, and only tried by the very few generals of first rate intelligence, who had emancipated themselves from the old routine which prescribed the regular drawing up of an army. Marlborough’s cavalry charge at the French right-centre at Blenheim is almost the only first-rate example of such a stroke in the old wars of the eighteenth century. Frederic’s great cavalry charge at Rossbach, which is sometimes quoted as a parallel, was after all no more than a sudden rush of the Prussian flank-cavalry at the exposed wing of an army which was unwisely trying to march around the position of its adversary. But Napoleon was the exponent of great frontal attacks of cavalry on chosen weak spots of the enemy’s line, which had already been well pounded by artillery or weakened in some other way. He would use 6000, 8000, or (as at Waterloo) even 12,000 men for one of these great strokes. At Austerlitz and Borodino these charges were made straight at the enemy’s front: Marengo and Dresden were won by such rushes: Eylau was only saved from falling into a disaster by a blow of the same kind. But cavalry had to be used at precisely the right moment, to be most skilfully led, and to be pushed home without remorse and despite of all losses, if it was to be successful. Even then it might be beaten off by thoroughly cool and unshaken infantry, as at Waterloo. It was only against exhausted, distracted, or untrained battalions that it could count with a reasonable certainty of success.

All through the war the raw and badly-drilled Spanish armies supplied the French squadrons with exactly this sort of opportunities. They were always being surprised before they had been formed by their generals in line of battle, or caught in confusion while they were executing some complicated manoeuvre. If attacked while they were in line or in column of march, they always fell victims to a cavalry charge, being from want of discipline extraordinarily slow to form square. As if this was not enough, they were often weak enough in morale to allow themselves to be broken even when they had time to form their squares. The battles of Medellin, OcaÑa, the Gebora, and Saguntum, were good examples of the power of a comparatively small mass of cavalry skilfully handled, over a numerous but ill-disciplined infantry. But the little-mentioned combat of Margalef in 1810 is perhaps the strongest example of the kind, for there six squadrons of Suchet’s cavalry (the 13th Cuirassiers supported by two squadrons of the 3rd Hussars) actually rode down in succession, a whole division of some 4000 men, whom they caught while forming line of battle from column of march. This was done, too, despite of the fact that the Spanish infantry was accompanied by three squadrons of cavalry (who made the usual bolt at the commencement of the action), as well as by a half-battery of artillery.

It was of course a very different matter when the French cavalry had to face the steady battalions of the British army. Looking down all the record of battles and skirmishes from 1808 down to 1814, I can only remember two occasions when the enemy’s cavalry really achieved a notable tactical success. Oddly enough both fell within the month of May, 1811. At Albuera there occurred that complete disaster to a British infantry brigade which has already been described in the preceding chapter. The other, and much smaller, success achieved by French cavalry over British infantry at Fuentes de OÑoro, a few days before the greater disaster at Albuera, has also been alluded to.97 These two disasters were wholly exceptional; usually the British infantry held its own, unless it was absolutely taken by surprise, and this even when attacked frontally by cavalry while it was deployed in the two deep line, without forming square. If the British had their flanks covered, they were perfectly safe, and turned back any charge with ease.

Indeed the repulse of cavalry by British troops in line, who did not take the trouble to form square because their flanks were covered, was not infrequent in the Peninsular War. The classic instance is that of the 5th Northumberland Fusiliers at El Bodon in 1811, who advanced in line firing against two French cavalry regiments and drove them off the heights, being able to do so because they had a squadron or two of British horse to protect them from being turned. A very similar feat was performed by the 52nd at Sabugal in 1811: and Harvey’s Portuguese brigade did as much at Albuera.

Much more, of course, was the square impregnable. When once safely placed in that formation, British troops habitually not only withstood cavalry charges at a stand-still, but made long movements over a battlefield inundated by the hostile cavalry. At Fuentes de OÑoro the Light Division, three British and two Portuguese squares, retreated at leisure for two miles while beset by four brigades of French cavalry, and reached the ground which they had been ordered to take up with a total loss of one killed and thirty-four wounded. Similarly at El Bodon the square composed of the 5th and 77th retreated for six miles, in the face of two cavalry brigades which could never break into them.98

Indeed it may be stated, as a rule almost without exception, that troops in square, whether British or French, were never broken during the Peninsular War even by very desperate and gallant charges. One of the best instances of this general rule was the case of the combat of Barquilla, where two grenadier companies of the French 22nd, surprised while covering a foraging party by five squadrons of British cavalry, got away in a level country after having been charged successively by three squadrons of the 1st Hussars of the German Legion, the 16th and the 14th Light Dragoons. One of these three squadron-charges, at least (that of the 14th), had been pushed home so handsomely that an officer and nine men fell actually among the French front rank, and a French observer noted bayonets broken, and musket barrels deeply cut into by the sweeping blows of the light dragoons, who yet failed entirely to break in.

There was indeed only one extraordinary case of properly formed squares being broken during the whole war, a case as exceptional in one way as the disaster to Colborne’s brigade at Albuera was in the other. This was at the combat of Garcia Hernandez, on the morning after the battle of Salamanca, where the heavy dragoons of the K.G.L. delivered what Foy (the French historian of the war) called the best charge that he had ever seen. The rear-guard of Marmont’s army had been formed of the one division which had not been seriously engaged in the battle, so that it could not be said to have been composed of shaken or demoralized troops. Nevertheless, two of its squares were actually broken by the legionary dragoons, though drawn up without haste or hurry on a hillside favourable for defensive action. According to Beamish’s History of the German Legion, a work composed a few years later from the testimony of eye-witnesses, the first square was broken by a mortally wounded horse, carrying a dead rider, leaping right upon the kneeling front rank of the square, and bearing down half a dozen men by its struggles and kicking. An officer, Captain Gleichen, spurred his horse into the gap thus created, his men followed, a wedge was thrust into the square, and it broke up, the large majority of the men surrendering. The second square, belonging to the same regiment, the 6th LÉger, was a little higher up the hillside than the first: it was a witness of the destruction of the sister-battalion, and seems to have been shaken by the sight: at any rate, when assailed a few minutes later by another squadron of the German Dragoons, it gave a rather wild though destructive volley, and wavered at the moment of receiving the attack, bulging in at the first charge. This was, of course, fatal. The broken squares lost 1400 prisoners, beside some 200 killed and wounded. The victorious dragoons paid a fairly high price for their success, losing 4 officers and 50 men killed, and 2 officers, and 60 men wounded out of 700 present; the extraordinary proportion of killed to wounded, 54 to 62 marking the deadly effect of musketry at the closest possible quarters.

This (as I said before) was the exception that proved the rule: the invulnerability of a steady square was such a commonplace, that Foy and the other old officers of the Army of Spain, looked with dismay upon Napoleon’s great attempt at Waterloo to break down the long line of British squares between La Haye Sainte and Hougoumont, by the charges of some ten or twelve thousand cavalry massed on a short front of less than a mile. The Emperor had not allowed for the superior resisting power of a thoroughly good infantry.

Of fights between cavalry and cavalry, when the two sides were present in numbers so fairly equal as to make the struggle a fair test of their relative efficiency, there were comparatively few in the Peninsular War. In the early days of the war Wellington was too scantily provided with horsemen, and could never afford to engage in a cavalry battle on a large scale. He had only six regiments at Talavera in 1809, only seven in the Bussaco campaign of 1810. When he divided his army for the simultaneous campaign in Beira and in Estremadura in March, 1811, he could only give Beresford three regiments, and keep four for himself. Nor could the deficiency be supplied (as was done in the artillery arm) by using Portuguese auxiliaries. The cavalry of that nation was so weak and so badly mounted that it is doubtful whether there were ever so many as 2000 of them in the field at once. Many of the twelve regiments were never mounted, and did garrison duty as infantry throughout the war.

It was not till the summer and autumn of 1811 that Wellington at last began to get large reinforcements of the mounted arm from England, which more than doubled his strength, for in the campaign of 1812 he had no less than fifteen regiments instead of seven. In the winter of 1812–13 further reinforcements came out, and in the Vittoria campaign he had at last a powerful cavalry equal or superior to that of the French.99

Yet even allowing for the weakness of Wellington’s mounted strength in his earlier campaigns, we must acknowledge that they played a comparatively small part in his scheme of operations. Though his dragoons did good service in keeping his front covered, and performed many gallant exploits (we need only mention Talavera and Fuentes de OÑoro to instance good self-sacrificing work done), they were seldom used as part of the main striking force that won a victory. Indeed, the charge of Le Marchant’s heavy brigade at Salamanca is about the only instance that can be cited of really decisive action by cavalry in any of the Duke’s battles. There were other notable successes to be remembered, but they were in side issues, and often not under the chief’s own eye—as, for example, Bock’s breaking of the squares at Garcia Hernandez on the day after Salamanca, and Lumley’s very creditable victory over Latour-Maubourg at Usagre on May 25, 1811.

Even when Wellington had at last a large cavalry force in 1812–14, it was seldom found massed, and I believe that more than three brigades were never found acting together. Such a force as six regiments was seldom seen in line and engaged. For the use of cavalry as a screen we may mention the combat of Venta del Pozo, during the retreat from Burgos in 1812. This was a skirmish fought by two brigades to cover the withdrawal of the infantry, which had to hurry hard on the way toward Salamanca and safety.

Something, no doubt, must be allowed for the fact that Wellington never, till the Waterloo campaign, had an officer of proved ability in chief command of his cavalry. Stapleton Cotton, who served so long in that capacity, was not a man of mark. Lumley, who had a short but distinguished career as a divisional commander, went home sick in 1811, and Le Marchant, who came out from home with a high reputation, was most unfortunately killed in his first battle, Salamanca, where his brigade did so much to settle the fortunes of the day. But allowing for all this, it remains clear that Wellington made comparatively little use of the cavalry arm—which could hardly have been expected when we remember how effectively he had used his horse at Assaye, quite early in his career. Possibly the fact that he was so hopelessly outmatched in this arm in 1809–11 sunk so much into his soul, that when he got his chance, later on, he was not ready to use it. Certainly several cases can be cited where it was not duly used to press a completed victory—most particularly after Vittoria and Orthez. There is no concealing the fact that Wellington’s reluctance to use great cavalry attacks was, at bottom, due to his doubts as to the tactical skill of his senior officers, and the power of his regiments to manoeuvre. He divulged his views on the subject, twelve years after the war was over, in a letter to Lord John Russell, dated July 31, 1826. “I considered our cavalry,” he wrote, “so inferior to the French from want of order, that although I considered one of our squadrons a match for two French, yet I did not care to see four British opposed to four French, and still more so as the numbers increased, and order (of course) became more necessary. They could gallop, but could not preserve their order.”

This seems a very hard judgment, when we examine in detail the cavalry annals of the Peninsular War. There were cases, no doubt, where English regiments threw away their chances by their blind fury in charging, and either got cut up from pursuing an original advantage to a reckless length, or at any rate missed an opportunity by over-great dispersion or riding off the field. The earliest case was seen at Vimeiro just after Wellington’s first landing in the Peninsula, when two squadrons of the 20th Light Dragoons, after successfully cutting up a beaten column of infantry, pushed on for half a mile in great disorder, to charge Junot’s cavalry reserves, and were horribly maltreated—losing about one man in four. An equally irrational exploit took place at Talavera, where the 23rd Light Dragoons, beaten off in a charge against a square which they had been ordered to attack, rushed on beyond it, against three successive lines of French cavalry, pierced the first, were stopped by the second, and had to cut their way back with a loss of 105 prisoners and 102 killed and wounded—nearly half their strength. An equally headlong business was the charge of the 13th Light Dragoons at Campo Mayor on March 25, 1811, when that regiment, having beaten in fair fight the French 26th Dragoons, and captured eighteen siege-guns which were retreating on the road, galloped on for more than six miles, sabring the scattered fugitives, till they were actually brought up by the fire of the fortress of Badajoz, on to whose very glacis they had made their way. The captured guns, meanwhile, were picked up by the French infantry who had been retreating along the high-road behind their routed cavalry, and brought off in safety—the 13th not having left a single man to secure them. Here, at any rate, not much loss was suffered, though a great capture was missed, but similar galloping tactics on June 11, 1812, at the combat of Maguilla, led to a complete disaster. Slade’s heavy brigade (1st Royals and 3rd Dragoon Guards) fell in with L’Allemand’s French brigade, the 17th and 27th Dragoons. Each drew up, but L’Allemand had placed one squadron in reserve far beyond the sky line, and out of sight. Slade charged, beat the five squadrons immediately opposed to him, and then (without reforming or setting aside any supports) galloped after the broken French brigade in complete disorder for a mile, till he came parallel to the unperceived reserve squadron, which charged him in flank and rear: the rest of the French halted and turned; Slade could not stand, and was routed, having 40 casualties and 118 prisoners. Wellington wrote about this to Hill: “I have never been more annoyed than by Slade’s affair. Our officers of cavalry have acquired a trick of galloping at everything. They never consider the situation, never think of manoeuvring before an enemy, and never keep back or provide for a reserve. All cavalry should charge in two lines, and at least one-third should be ordered beforehand to pull up and reform, as soon as the charge has been delivered, and the enemy been broken.”100

In the first three of the cases mentioned above, the discredit of the rash and inconsiderate pressing on of the charge falls on the regimental officers—in the last on the brigadier, Slade. It must be confessed that Wellington was not very happy in his senior cavalry officers—Erskine, Long, and Slade have all some bad marks against them—especially the last-named, whose proceedings seem nearly to have broken the heart of the lively and intelligent diarist Tomkinson, of the 16th Light Dragoons, who had the misfortune to serve long under him. Stapleton Cotton, the commander of the whole cavalry, was but a mediocrity; every one will remember his old chief’s uncomplimentary remarks about him Àpropos of the siege of Bhurtpore. The man who ought to have been in charge of the British horse during the whole war was Lord Paget, who had handled Sir John Moore’s five cavalry regiments with such admirable skill and daring during the Corunna campaign: his two little fights of Sahagun and Benevente were models in their way. But he was unhappily never employed again till Waterloo—where his doings, under his new name of Lord Uxbridge, are sufficiently well known. But a question of seniority, and an unhappy family quarrel with the Wellesleys (having absconded with the wife of Wellington’s brother Henry, he fought a duel with her brother in consequence) prevented him from seeing service under the Duke in the eventful years 1809–14. Of the cavalry generals who took part in the great campaigns, after Paget the most successful was Lumley, who has two very fine achievements to his credit—the containing of Soult’s superior cavalry during the crisis of the battle of Albuera, and the combat of Usagre, of May 25, 1811, noted above. This was considered such an admirable piece of work by the enemy, that it is related at great length in Picard’s Histoire de la Cavalerie, alone among all British successes of the Peninsular War.

It needs a word of notice, as it is hardly mentioned in the Wellington dispatches, and very briefly by Napier. Latour-Maubourg had been sent by Soult to push back Beresford’s advanced posts, and discover his position. He had a very large force—two brigades of dragoons and four regiments of light cavalry, in all 3500 sabres. Lumley, who was screening Beresford’s movements, had only three British regiments (3rd Dragoon Guards, 4th Dragoons, 13th Light Dragoons), 980 sabres, and Madden’s and Otway’s Portuguese brigades, 1000 sabres, with 300 of Penne Villemur’s Spanish horse. Wishing to contain the French advance as long as possible, he took up a position behind the bridge and village of Usagre, a defile through which the French must pass in order to reach him. Latour-Maubourg, relying on the immense superiority of numbers which he possessed, was reckless in his tactics. After sending off a brigade of light horse to turn Lumley’s position, by a very long detour and distant fords, he pushed his other three brigades into the village, with orders to cross the bridge and press the enemy in front. Lumley was showing nothing but a line of Portuguese vedettes, having withdrawn his squadrons behind the sky line. He was apprised of the turning movement, but, knowing the ground better than the French, was aware that it would take a very much longer time than the enemy expected, so resolved to hold his position to the last moment. He allowed the two leading regiments of Bron’s dragoons to pass the bridge and form on the nearer side, and then, while the third regiment was crossing the river, and the second brigade was entering the long village, charged suddenly in upon the first brigade, with six English squadrons in front and six Portuguese squadrons on the right flank. The two deployed French regiments were thrown back on the third, which was jammed on the bridge. Hence they could not get away to reform and rally, the road behind them being entirely blocked, while the second brigade in the village could not get to the front to give assistance. All that Latour-Maubourg could do was to dismount its leading regiment and occupy with it the houses on each side of the bridge, from which they kept back the victorious British by their carbine fire. Lumley, meanwhile, dealt with the three routed regiments at his leisure, killing or wounding 250 men and capturing 80 prisoners before the disordered wrecks succeeded in re-crossing the river. Latour-Maubourg, warned by this bloody check, showed for the future no anxiety to press in upon Beresford’s cavalry screen.

How not to deal with an exactly similar situation, it may be remarked, was shown on the 23rd October of the following year, 1812, by two British brigadiers, who, charged with the covering of the retreat of Wellington’s army from Burgos, were holding a position behind the bridge of Venta del Pozo or Villadrigo, when the part of the French cavalry immediately opposed to them, the brigade of Faverot, ten squadrons strong, came down to the defile. Faverot, like Latour-Maubourg at Usagre, took the hazardous step of ordering his leading regiment to pass the bridge at a trot, and form on the other side. This Bock, the senior British brigadier, allowed it to do, and was right in so doing, for the proper moment to strike was when the enemy should have half or three-quarters of his men across the bridge, and the rest jammed upon it. But Bock allowed the psychological moment to pass, and did not charge till the French brigade had almost entirely crossed, and could put very nearly equal numbers in line against him. Then, moving too late, with some squadrons of Anson’s brigade in support, he came to a desperate standing fight with the enemy, in which both suffered very heavily. But when all the British and German Legion regiments were already engaged, the rearmost squadrons of the French, which had crossed the bridge under cover of the fighting line, fell upon Bock from the flank, and turned one of his wings; the British cavalry had to give way and retreat, till it was covered by the infantry of the 7th Division. If Bock had charged five minutes earlier, he would have nipped the French column in the middle, and probably have destroyed the leading regiments. The French brigade, as it was, lost 18 officers and 116 men, Anson and Bock about 200, among whom were four officers and 70 men prisoners.

On the whole, I am inclined to think that Wellington was a little hard on his cavalry. There was, of course, considerable justification for his criticisms. There was a want of decision and intelligence among some of his brigadiers, and a tendency to headlong and reckless charging straight ahead among many of his regimental officers. But looking dispassionately at the cavalry work on both sides, it is impossible to say that the French marshals were any better served. There is no striking instance in the annals of the British campaigns of 1809–14 of the army, or even a division, being surprised for want of vigilance on the part of its cavalry screen, while several such can be quoted on the French side—especially Ney’s surprise at Foz d’Arouce on March 15, 1811—caused by his light cavalry under Lamotte having completely failed to watch the roads, or the better-known rout of Girard at Arroyo dos Molinos later in the same year. On that occasion an infantry division, accompanied by no less than two brigades of light cavalry, was attacked at dawn and dispersed with heavy loss, owing to the fact that the cavalry brigadiers, Bron and Briche, had taken no precautions whatever to feel for the enemy. They, like the infantry, were completely surprised, being caught with the horses unsaddled, and the men dispersed among houses; hence the chasseurs were taken prisoners in large numbers by Hill’s sudden rush, one of the brigadiers and a cavalry colonel being among the 2000 unwounded prisoners taken. There is no such large-scale surprise as this among all the records of the British cavalry. The worst that I know were those of a squadron of the 13th Light Dragoons on April 6, 1811, near Elvas, and a very similar one of the 11th Light Dragoons two months later, not far from the same place. In the last case the disaster is said to have happened because the regiment had only just landed from England after long home-service, and the captain in command lost his head from sheer inexperience. With regard to this I may quote the following pregnant sentence, from the Diary of Tomkinson, who wrote far the best detailed account of the life of a cavalry regiment during those eventful years. “To attempt giving men or officers any idea in England of outpost duty was considered absurd, and when they came abroad they had all to learn. The fact was that there was no one to teach them. Sir Stapleton Cotton (who afterwards commanded the cavalry in Spain) once tried an experiment with the 14th and 16th Light Dragoons near Woodbridge in Suffolk. In the end he got the supposed enemy’s vedettes and his own all facing the same way. In England I never saw nor heard of cavalry taught to charge, disperse, and reform, which of all things, before an enemy, is most essential. Inclining in line right or left is very useful, and that was scarcely ever practised.” He adds in 1819: “On return to English duty, after the peace, we all continued the old system, each regiment estimating its merit by mere celerity of movement. Not one idea suggested by our war experience was remembered, and after five years we shall have to commence all over again, if we are sent abroad.”

In short, the proper work of cavalry, apart from mere charging, had to be learnt on Spanish soil when any regiment landed. But it was in the end picked up by the better corps, and on the whole the outpost and reconnaissance work of the Peninsular Army seem to have been well done, though some regiments had a better reputation than others. Much of the work of this kind speaks for itself. The most admirable achievement during the war was undoubtedly that of the 1st Hussars of the K.G.L., who, assisted afterwards by the 14th and 16th Light Dragoons, kept for four months (March to May, 1810) the line of the Agueda and Azava, 40 miles long, against a fourfold strength of French cavalry, without once letting a hostile reconnaissance through, losing a picket or even a vedette, or sending a piece of false information back to General Craufurd, whose front they were covering.

Allusion has been made in the opening words of this chapter to Wellington’s memorandum for the tactical management of cavalry. It was only issued after Waterloo, in the form of “Instructions to Officers commanding Brigades of Cavalry in the Army of Occupation,” but, no doubt, represents the tactics which he had evolved from his Peninsular experience.101 Too long to give in entirety, it is worth analysing. The heads run as follows:—

(1) A reserve must always be kept, to improve a success, or to cover an unsuccessful charge. This reserve should not be less than half the total number of sabres, and may occasionally be as much as two-thirds of it.

(2) Normally a cavalry force should form in three lines: the first and second lines should be deployed, the reserve may be in column, but so formed as to be easily changed into line.

(3) The second line should be 400 or 500 yards from the first, the reserve a similar distance from the second line, if cavalry is about to act against cavalry. This is found not too great a distance to prevent the rear lines from improving an advantage gained by the front line, nor too little to prevent a defeated front line from passing between the intervals of its supports without disordering them.

(4) When, however, cavalry is charging infantry, the second line should be only 200 yards behind the first, the object being that it should be able to deliver its charge without delay, against a battalion which has spent its fire against the first line, and will not be prepared for a second charge pushed in rapid succession to the first.

(5) When the first line delivers its attack at a gallop, the supports must follow at a walk only, lest they be carried forward by the rush, and get mingled with the line in front at the onset. For order in the supports must be rigidly kept—they are useless if they have got into confusion, when they are wanted to sustain and cover a checked first line.

A note as to horses may finish our observations on the cavalry side of Wellington’s tactics. In countless places, in diaries no less than dispatches, we find the complaint that the trooper of 1810 was, when not well looked after by his officers, a bad horse-master—careless as to feeding his mount, and still more so as to saddle-galls and such like. It is often remarked that the one German light cavalry regiment in the original Peninsular Army, the 1st Hussars of the King’s German Legion, set an example which some other regiments might have copied with advantage, being far more conscientious and considerate to their beasts. It is interesting to find that the French cavalry reports have exactly the same complaints, and the number of dismounted men shown in French regimental states as a consequence of sick horses was as great as our own. Several times I have found the report that when a considerable number of French cavalry had been captured, quite a small proportion of their horses could be turned over to serve as remounts for their captors, because of the abominable condition in which they were found. The fact was that the climate and the food seem to have been equally deleterious to the English and French horses: a diet of chopped straw and green maize—often all that could be got—was deadly to horses accustomed to stable diet in England or France. Wellington sometimes actually imported hay and oats from England; but they could not be got far up country, and only served for regiments that chanced to be put into winter quarters near the sea. Practically all the remounts came from England—the Portuguese and Spanish horses having been tried and found wanting many times. In 1808 the 20th Light Dragoons were embarked without horses, being ordered to mount themselves in Portugal; but the experiment failed wholly.

Only a short note is required as to Wellington’s use of artillery. In his early years of command he was almost as weak in this arm as in cavalry. There was not one British battery per division available in 1809. But the Portuguese artillery being numerous, and ere long very efficient, was largely used to supplement the British after 1810. Yet even when it had become proportioned to the number of his whole army, the Duke did not use it in the style of Bonaparte. He never worked with enormous masses of guns manoeuvring in front line, and supporting an attack, such as the Emperor used. Only at Bussaco, Vittoria, and Waterloo do we find anything like a concentration of many batteries to play an important part in the line of battle. Usually the Duke preferred to work with small units—individual batteries—placed in well-chosen spots, and often kept concealed till the critical moment. They were dotted along the front of the position rather than massed, and in most cases must be regarded as valuable support for the infantry that was to win the battle, rather than as an arm intended to work for its independent aims and to take a special part in war. Of several of Napoleon’s victories we may say that they were artilleryman’s battles; nothing of the kind can be predicated of any of Wellington’s triumphs, though the guns were always well placed, and most usefully employed, as witness Bussaco, Fuentes de OÑoro, and Waterloo.

As to Wellington’s use of siege artillery, we must speak in a later chapter.102 It was, through no fault of his own, the weakest point in his army: indeed till 1811 he never had a British battering-train, and in the early sieges of Badajoz he worked in forma pauperis, with improvised material, mainly Portuguese, and very deficient in quality. The record is not a cheerful one; but it must be said that the home authorities, and not Wellington, were the responsible parties for any checks that were suffered. A great general who is not an artillery or engineering specialist must trust to his scientific officers, and certainly cannot be made responsible for shortage of men and material due to the parsimony of his masters at home.

So much for the great Duke’s tactics. We shall presently be investigating his system of military organization—the inner machinery of his army. But before dealing with it, we shall have to spare some attention for his greater lieutenants, whose individualities had an important share in the management of his army.