Читать книгу English Battles and Sieges in the Peninsula - William Francis Patrick Napier - Страница 5

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Laborde was not pursued, his retreat was inland, and to keep near the coast was essential to the English general, because he expected reinforcements by sea, and desired to insure their disembarkation and receive provisions from the ships. In this view he designed to march by his right on Torres Vedras, which would bring him near the ocean, give command of the great road to Lisbon, and throw off Loison and Laborde from that capital; but in the night came intelligence that a large fleet, conveying two brigades of infantry, was on the coast, and to protect their landing he made for Vimiero, a village near the sea, nine miles from Torres Vedras: there the brigades from the ocean augmented his force to sixteen thousand British soldiers. Junot, meanwhile, having rallied Laborde’s and Loison’s troops, had forestalled him at Torres Vedras, with fourteen thousand good soldiers and twenty-three guns of small calibre; and while his powerful cavalry prevented the scouts from making observations, he prepared to march in the night of the 20th and attack on the 21st. Sir Arthur had also projected a march for the night of the 20th, to turn Junot’s left and gain Mafra in his rear, without assailing Torres Vedras, which, though shrouded by the horsemen, was known as a strong position. The armies would thus have changed places without encountering, if the English ministers had not appointed three generals senior to Sir Arthur to act in Portugal, one of whom, Sir Harry Burrard, had arrived. He did not land and assume command, but he forbade the projected march, and thus deprived the English army of the initiatory movement, giving it to the French: moreover, as the ground at Vimiero had been taken temporarily and for ease, the troops were not in fighting order, thus violating the maxim which prescribes constant readiness for battle when near an enemy. It was thus posted.

On the right a mountain ridge, trending from the sea inland, ended abruptly on a small plain in which the village of Vimiero was situated, and the greater part of the army was heaped on the summit.

On the other side of the plain the same line was continued by a ridge of less elevation, narrow, yet protected by a ravine almost impassable, and being without water had only one regiment and some picquets posted there.

In front of the break between these heights and within cannon-shot, was an isolated hill of inferior elevation, yet of good strength, masking the village and plain of Vimiero, and leaving only narrow egress from the latter on the right. On this hill six guns and two brigades of infantry, Fane’s and Anstruther’s, were posted, the former on the left: behind them in the plain the commissariat and artillery stores were parked.

All the cavalry with the army—a single squadron under Col. Taylor—was placed at the egress from the plain, on the direct road to Torres Vedras; but from the counter hills, facing the position, another road, running from Torres Vedras to Lourinham, led at the distance of two miles round the left, and by it an enemy could gain the ridge where the picquets were posted, seize the artillery and commissariat stores in the plain, and take the central hill and right-hand mountain in reverse.

In the night of the 20th a German officer of cavalry aroused Sir Arthur Wellesley, saying the French army, twenty thousand strong, was within an hour’s march. Incredulous of this tale, the bearer of which was in evident consternation, he merely took some additional precautions; and at sunrise all eyes were turned southward, seeking an enemy who was not to be seen. Nevertheless the German’s report was only an exaggeration.1 Junot had been in march all night with fourteen, not twenty, thousand men, designing to fall on at daybreak; but the rugged ways had retarded his progress, and his vanguard of cavalry did not crown the hills facing the English position before eight o’clock—the dust of its march having been discovered an hour before. Had he arrived by daybreak this dust could not have been observed, and an hour of preparation would have been lost to the English general, which, with a good plan of battle, would have enabled the French to gain the left-hand ridge, by the Lourinham road, before the troops on the right could cross to occupy that part of the position.

Junot employed little time to note his adversary’s ground and dispositions, and entirely neglected the mountain on the English right, as being refused to his line of march; but as the left-hand ridge appeared naked of troops, he resolved to seize it by a detachment, and take the English central hill in reverse while he attacked it in front with his main body, thinking he should find the bulk of the army there. In this view he directed General Brennier with a brigade across the ravine covering the ridge, and Laborde with another against the central hill, supporting the latter with Loison’s division, a reserve of grenadiers under Kellermann, and the cavalry, thirteen hundred strong, under Margaron.

To act on conjecture is dangerous in war. Junot conjectured falsely, and his entire disregard of the English right was a great error; for when his cavalry crowned the counter hills, Sir A. Wellesley, seeing the movements did not menace that part of his position, retained there one brigade under General Hill to serve as a support to the centre, while four other brigades were sent across the plain to occupy the left-hand ridge, and a fifth, reinforced with Trant’s Portuguese, moved to a parallel ridge in rear, where they could watch the Lourinham road.

All these movements were hidden from Junot by the central hill, and two brigades reached their ground before the action commenced; yet, knowing the ravine in front to be impracticable, they looked for an attack from the left, and formed two lines across the ridge, trusting to a chain of skirmishers to protect their right. The two other brigades were to have furnished a third line, but while they were passing the plain below the battle was begun in the centre with great fury.

In front of the English position the ground was so broken and wooded that the movements of the French, after they passed the counter hills, could not be discerned until they burst upon the centre in attack; and though their artillery was most numerous, the tormented ground impeded its action, while the English guns, of heavier metal, had free play: their infantry, inferior in number, would therefore have fought at great disadvantage, even if Junot’s combinations had not failed; but soon that general discovered the mischief of over-haste in war. Brennier found the bottom of the ravine impracticable, and floundering amidst rocks and the beds of torrents was unable to co-operate with Laborde; hence Junot had to reinforce the latter with Loison’s infantry, and detach another column of all arms under General Solignac to turn the English flank by the Lourinham road. But he did not perceive that Sir Arthur, anticipating such an effort, had there, not a flank but a front, three lines deep, while the fifth brigade and Trant’s Portuguese were so disposed, that Solignac, whose movement was isolated, could be cut off and placed between two fires.

Laborde and Loison opened three attacks, one principal, with minor bodies on the flanks. The first, being well led and covered by skirmishers, forced its way up with great vehemence and power, but with great loss also; for General Fane had called up the reserve artillery under Colonel Robe to reinforce the six guns already on the platform, and while they smote the column in front, another battery, belonging to one of the brigades then ascending the left-hand ridge, smote it in the right flank, and under this conjoint fire of artillery and a wasting musketry the French reached the summit, there to sustain a murderous volley, to be charged by the 50th Regiment, overturned, and driven down again.

Of the other two columns, the one assailing Anstruther’s brigade was beaten quickly, and that general had time to reinforce Fane’s left with the second battalion of the 43rd in opposition to Kellermann’s grenadiers, half of whom now reinforced the third column on that side. This regiment, posted in a churchyard on the edge of the declivity, had one or two companies in advance amongst some trees, and from thence the first burst of the grenadiers drove them upon the main body; but then Robe’s battery so smote the left of the French that they dipped into the ravine on their right, where the battery from the ridge caught them on the other flank; the moment was happily seized by the 43rd to pour down in a solid mass, and with ringing shouts it dashed against the column, driving it back with irrecoverable disorder: yet not without the fiercest fighting. The loss of the regiment was a hundred and twenty, and when the charge was over, a French soldier and the Sergeant Armourer, Patrick, were found grimly confronting each other in death as they had done in life, their hands still clutching their muskets, and their bayonets plunged to the sockets in each manly breast! It is by such men that thousands are animated and battles won.

Broken by these rough shocks, the French, to whom defeat was amazement, retired in confused masses and in a slanting direction towards the Lourinham road, and while thus disordered Colonel Taylor rode out upon them doing great execution; but as suddenly Margaron came down with his strong cavalry, and the gallant Englishman fell with most of his horsemen. However, half of Junot’s army was now beaten with the loss of seven guns, and though Margaron’s powerful cavalry, and that moiety of Kellermann’s grenadiers which had not been engaged, interposed to prevent pursuit, the line of retreat left the shortest road to Torres Vedras uncovered—a great fault which did not escape the English general’s rapid comprehension.

Brennier, unable to emerge from the rocks and hollows where he was entangled, had been of no weight in this action, but Solignac, having turned the ravine, appeared on the left about the time Taylor’s charge terminated the fight in the centre, and his division, strongly constituted with all arms, was advancing impetuously along the narrow ground, when General Ferguson, who was there in opposition, met him with a counter attack, so fierce, so rapid and sustained, that the French, though fighting stubbornly, bent to the strong pressure. Solignac was wounded, his cavalry, artillery and infantry, heaped together and out-flanked, were cut off from their line of retreat and forced into low ground on their right with a loss of six guns. These pieces, placed under guard of the 71st and 82nd while Ferguson continued his course, were again lost by one of those events which make battles the property of fortune; for Brennier, after long struggling, having worked up the ravine by his right to an accessible place, had ascended the ridge, and, unexpectedly falling upon the two regiments in charge of the captured guns, beat them back. He thus got behind Ferguson, and had time been given to reform his troops and assail that general’s rear mischief would have ensued; but the English regiments were disordered only for a moment; they rallied on higher ground, poured in their fire, broke the French brigade with a charge and made Brennier, who was wounded, a prisoner. Solignac’s division was then without resource, when suddenly another and more decisive change came over this fitful battle.

Junot’s left wing and centre had been so discomfited, that only half of Kellermann’s grenadiers and Margaron’s cavalry remained unbroken, and the road of Torres Vedras, the shortest to Lisbon, was uncovered; Brennier’s column was entirely broken; Solignac’s division was in confusion on low ground, cut off from Junot, and menaced front and rear. But of the English army, Hill’s brigade had not fired a shot; neither had the brigade conjoined with Trant’s Portuguese, and it was then marching to take Solignac’s division in rear. The two brigades of Ferguson’s third line had lost only a few men, and those on the central hill had not been hardly handled; there was therefore a powerful force in hand for further operations. Now Brennier, when first taken, eagerly asked if the reserve had attacked, and the other prisoners being questioned on this point replied in the affirmative,2 wherefore the English general, judging the French power exhausted, and the moment come for rendering victory decisive, with the genius of a great captain resolved to make it not only decisive on the field but of the fate of Portugal.

Expecting Solignac’s division to lay down its arms, he designed to push his own right wing and centre, under Hill, on Torres Vedras, to which they were two miles nearer than any part of the French army; that stroke was sure, and Junot would have been cut off from Lisbon. Meanwhile Sir Arthur meaned in person vigorously to drive him across the Baragueda mountain on to the Tagus, by which he would lose his remaining artillery, and have with disorganised and dispirited troops to seek refuge under the guns of one of the frontier fortresses. This great project was stifled as soon as conceived. General Burrard had arrived on the field of battle, he could not comprehend such a stroke of war, and not only stopped the execution but ordered Ferguson to halt. Then Solignac’s division, with the alacrity which distinguished Napoleon’s soldiers, instantly rejoined Junot, who as promptly recovered his original ground, and being joined by twelve hundred fresh men from Lisbon regained Torres Vedras. The battle of Vimiero thus terminated impotently. Nevertheless, Burrard’s decision, with exception of the unaccountable order to arrest Ferguson’s career, was not without a military justification, admitted to be of weight by Sir Arthur, but it was that of an ordinary general in opposition to a great captain.