It may be remarked that the loss of the victorious cavalry was very heavy, though not out of proportion to their success. The lancers lost 130 men out of 580—the hussars who charged in support of them 70 out of 300. It was a curious evidence of the headlong nature of their charge that some scores of the Poles, after passing by and failing to break the square of the 2/31st, actually rode down the rear of Zayas’s Spanish line, sweeping aside that general and his staff, and coming into collision soon after with Beresford and his—the Marshal actually parried a lance-thrust, and cast the man who dealt it from his saddle, and his aides-de-camp had to fight for their lives.

At this moment the head of Hoghton’s brigade was just coming up from the rear—and its leading regiment opening fire on the scattered lancers shot a great many men of the rear rank of Zayas’s Spaniards in the back. Notwithstanding this, and to their eternal credit, the Spaniards did not break, and continued their frontal contest with Girard’s division, which had not slackened for a moment during Colborne’s disastrous fight[488].

There was a distinct pause, however, in the battle after this bloody episode. The leading division of French infantry had been so much shaken and driven into disorder, by Colborne’s momentary pressure on their flank, that the whole column had lost its impetus, and stood wavering below the Spanish line. Girard, regarding his own division as practically a spent force, ordered up Gazan’s two brigades to relieve it. There was fearful confusion while the new columns were thrusting their way to the front, and they were never properly formed. For the rest of the battle the two divisions formed a dense mass of 8,000 men, which looked like one solid clump, without much vestige of regular formation.

While this confused change of front-line was being carried out by the French, Beresford had leisure to deploy Hoghton’s brigade in the rear of Zayas, and Abercrombie’s in rear of Ballasteros, lower down the slope. He then proceeded to bring them forward to relieve the Spaniards. The latter, it is due to them to explain, had behaved extremely well. Beresford bears witness that Zayas’s four battalions, on the edge of the undulation which marked the front of battle ‘did not even to the end break their line or quit the field, as Napier alleges. After having suffered very considerable loss they began to crowd together in groups, and it was then that the second line (Hoghton and Abercrombie) was ordered up.’ The losses of the two battalions of Irlanda, and the 2nd and 4th Spanish Guards, were indeed the best testimonial to their good service. They had 615 officers and men killed and wounded out of 2,026 present, over 30 per cent.—all lost by musketry or artillery fire without a foot of ground having been yielded, in a close struggle that had lasted over an hour.

With the coming up of Gazan’s division on one side, and of Hoghton’s and Abercrombie’s brigades on the other, the second stage of the battle was reached. The clash was confined to the top of the plateau, the French having only a skirmishing line opposite Abercrombie on the slope, though the central backbone of the ridge was crowded with their dense columns. Hence it may be said that for the next half-hour Hoghton’s men, assisted by the 2/31st, the sole survivors of Colborne’s brigade alone, were fighting the entire 5th Corps—a line of 1,900 men two deep opposed to a mass of 8,000 twelve deep, on an equal front. This was the hardest and most splendid fighting done that day, not even excepting the glorious advance of the Fusiliers half an hour later. The three battalions, 29th, 1/48th, and 1/57th, absolutely died in line[489], without yielding an inch. Their losses speak for themselves—56 officers and 971 men killed and wounded out of 95 officers and 1,556 men present. The best account of this part of the action that I know is in the reminiscences of Moyle Sherer of the 1/48th:—

‘When we arrived near the retiring Spaniards, and formed our line to advance through them towards the enemy, a very noble-looking young Spanish officer rode up to me, and begged me, with a sort of proud anxiety, to take notice that his countrymen were ordered to retire, not flying. Just as our line had entirely cleared the Spaniards, the smoke of battle was for one moment blown aside, by the slackening of the fire, and gave to our view the French grenadier caps, their arms, and the whole aspect of their frowning masses. It was a grand, but a momentary sight; a heavy atmosphere of smoke enveloped us, and few objects could be discerned at all—none distinctly. The best soldier can make no calculation of time, if he be in the heat of an engagement, but this murderous contest of musketry lasted long. At intervals a shriek or a groan told that men were falling around me; but it was not always that the tumult of the contest suffered me to catch individual sounds. The constant “feeling to the centre” and the gradual diminution of our front more truly bespoke the havock of death. We were the whole time progressively advancing upon and shaking the enemy. As we moved slowly, but ever a little in advance, our own killed and wounded lay behind us; we arrived among those of the Spaniards who had fallen in the first onset, then among those of the enemy. At last we were only twenty yards from their front.’ The brigade had lost nearly two-thirds of its numbers, the brigadier had been killed; of the three battalion commanders one was killed and two wounded. The front of the shrinking line no longer covered that of the French mass before it. But the enemy was in no condition to profit by the exhaustion of the British. The fire of the line had, as always, been more effective than that of the column. The front of the enemy was one deep bank of dead and wounded; the 5th Corps lost 3,000 men that day, and there can be no doubt that 2,000 of them fell during this murderous exchange of musketry.

Meanwhile it is strange to find that both commanders allowed this duel of the many against the few, on the plateau, to go on undisturbed. Soult had still eleven battalions intact in reserve—Werlé’s brigade and two battalions of grenadiers réunis: his cavalry was also doing nothing, save observe Lumley’s much inferior force. Beresford had still of intact troops the 4th Division, the three brigades of Hamilton’s and Collins’s Portuguese, and the 4,000 Spaniards who had remained on their original position. None of those forces on either side were being utilized during the crisis of the battle.

The explanation is to be found in the narratives of the two hostile generals. Soult says in his dispatch to the Emperor, ‘When I ascended the heights, at the moment that the enemy’s second line advanced and began to press in our front, I was surprised to notice their great numbers. Immediately afterwards I learned from a Spanish prisoner that Blake had already joined Beresford, so that I had 30,000 men to deal with. The odds were not fair, and I resolved at once to give up my original project, and to aim at nothing more than retaining the ground already won.’ The Marshal therefore changed his plan from an offensive to a defensive battle, and refused to engage his reserves, or to bid his cavalry charge—a most half-hearted resolve.

As to Beresford, he was anxious to succour Hoghton, but he did not wish to move the 4th Division, which (he thought) was playing its part in ‘containing’ Latour-Maubourg’s enormous mass of cavalry, and covering the Valverde and Badajoz road—the line of communication of the allied army. He sent back instead to order up Hamilton’s Portuguese to the hilltop—4,800 fresh infantry. But it took a much greater time to bring them up than Beresford had expected. Some of the aides-de-camp sent to summon them were wounded on the way; but the main delay was caused by the fact that Hamilton, instead of taking up Stewart’s original position, had gone down closer to Albuera, to support Alten’s brigade at the village against Godinot’s attack, which had become a very fierce one. It was only after many precious minutes had been wasted that he was found, and Fonseca’s and Collins’s brigades did not start for half an hour after the order had been sent to them. Campbell’s brigade remained to give Alten help, if he should need it.

Meanwhile Beresford was trying to utilize the troops already at hand: Abercrombie’s brigade was told to wheel inward and attack the right flank of the 5th Corps, while the Marshal himself tried to move up Carlos de España’s Spanish brigade to the place where Colborne had fought so unsuccessfully a little earlier, on the left flank of the French mass. But this brigade, demoralized relics of the lost army of the Gebora, refused to face the fire, though the Marshal went to lead it on in person, seized one colonel by the epaulettes, and tried to drag him to the front of his battalion. As this brigade only lost 33 men out of 1,700 present, it is clear that it misbehaved.

At last Beresford grew so anxious at the sight of Hoghton’s gallant brigade shrinking away to nothing, while no succour appeared from the rear, that he actually sent orders to Alten’s Germans to evacuate Albuera village, and to come in haste to strengthen the centre. They were to be relieved by a brigade of the Spaniards who still held the old position above the village. The legionaries were disentangled from the village with some difficulty, and the French 16th Léger got into it before the Spaniards had taken Alten’s place. If Godinot had been in force, the position here would have been very dangerous; but he had only six battalions, 3,500 men in all, and was hopelessly outnumbered, for Hamilton had left Campbell’s Portuguese brigade opposite him, and 3,000 Spaniards came down from the heights. As a matter of fact Alten never had to go to the front; the crisis on the heights was over before he got far from the village, and he was sent back to retake it half an hour after he had given it up. This he accomplished with a loss of 100 men, long after the more important business on the heights was over.

The stroke which ended the battle came from a direction where Beresford had intended to keep to the defensive, and was delivered by the one part of his army which he had refused to utilize—the 4th Division. Cole and his eight battalions had been standing for an hour and a half supporting the allied cavalry, opposite Maubourg’s threatening squadrons. He was himself doubting whether he ought not to take a more active part, and sent an aide-de-camp to Beresford to ask for further orders[490]; but this officer was badly wounded on the way, and the message was never delivered. If it had been, the answer would undoubtedly have been in the negative.

But at this moment there rode up to the 4th Division Henry Hardinge, then a young Portuguese colonel, and Deputy Quarter-master-general of the Portuguese army. He had no orders from Beresford, but he took upon himself to urge Cole to assume the responsibility of advancing, saying (what was true enough) that Hoghton’s brigade on the heights above could not hold out much longer, and that there were no British reserves behind the centre. Cole hesitated for a moment—the proposal that he should advance across open ground in face of 3,500 French cavalry, without any adequate support of that arm on his own side, was enough to make any man think twice. But he had already been pondering over the move himself, and after a short conference with Lumley, his colleague in command of the cavalry, determined to risk all.

The 4th Division was ordered to deploy from columns into line, and to strike obliquely at the French flank. Entirely conscious of the danger from the twenty-six squadrons of French horse before him, Cole flanked his deployed battalions with a unit in column at either end: at the right flank, where Harvey’s Portuguese brigade was drawn out, he placed a provisional battalion made up of the nine light companies of all his regiments, British and Portuguese; at the left extremity, on the flank of his British Fusilier brigade—the two battalions of the 7th, and the 23rd Royal Welsh Fusiliers—was a good Portuguese unit—Hawkshaw’s battalion of the Loyal Lusitanian Legion[491]. The line made up 5,000 bayonets—2,000 British, 3,000 Portuguese. The whole of the English and Spanish cavalry advanced on his flank and rear, Lefebure’s horse-artillery battery accompanying the extreme right[492].

The sight of this mile of bayonets moving forward showed Soult that he must fight for his life—there was no drawn battle possible, but only dire disaster, unless Cole were stopped. Accordingly he told Latour-Maubourg to charge the Portuguese brigade, while the whole nine battalions of Werlé’s reserve were sent forward diagonally to protect the flank of the 5th Corps, moving along the upper slope of the heights so as to thrust themselves between the Fusilier brigade and the flank of Girard and Gazan. Soult had now no reserve left except the two battalions of grenadiers réunis, which he held back for the last chance, on his right rear, keeping up the connexion with Godinot.

The story of what happened at the right end of Cole’s line is simple: Latour-Maubourg sent four regiments of dragoons at the middle of the Portuguese brigade, thinking to break it down, as he had done often before with deployed infantry in Spanish battles. But Harvey’s four battalions, keeping absolutely steady, delivered a series of volleys which completely shattered the advance of the charging squadrons. It was a fine achievement for troops which had never before taken part in the thick of a battle—for the 11th and 23rd Portuguese Line had not been engaged at Bussaco or any previous action of importance. Owing to their excellent behaviour the flank of the British brigade was kept perfectly safe from cavalry assaults during the next half-hour.

Myers’s three Fusilier battalions, therefore, with the Lusitanian Legion battalion that guarded their left rear, came into collision with Werlé’s three regiments without any interference from without. They were outnumbered by over two to one—2,000 British and 600 Portuguese against 5,600 French. But Werlé had adopted the same vicious formation which had already hampered the 5th Corps—his nine battalions were in three columns of regiments, each with a front of only two companies and a depth of nine, i. e. he was opposing in each case a front of about 120 men in the first two ranks, capable of using their muskets, to a front of about 500—the fact that there were 16 men in depth, behind the 120 who could fire, was of no profit to him. Three separate regimental duels followed—the 23rd and the 1st and 2nd battalions of the 7th Fusiliers each tackled a column, as Blakeney, the colonel of the last-named unit, tells in his letter[493]. In each case the stress for the moment was tremendous. Blakeney may be quoted for its general character:—

‘From the quantity of smoke,’ he writes, ‘I could perceive very little but what went on in my own front. The 1st battalion of the 7th closed with the right column of the French: I moved on and closed with the second; the 23rd took the third. The men behaved most gloriously, never losing their rank, and closing to the centre as casualties occurred. The French faced us at a distance of about thirty or forty paces. During the closest part of the action I saw their officers endeavouring to deploy their columns, but all to no purpose. For as soon as the third of a company got out, they would immediately run back, to be covered by the front of their column.’ This lasted for some minutes—possibly twenty—when suddenly the enemy broke, and went up the hillside in three disorderly clumps, which presently splayed out into a mass of running men. The Fusiliers followed, still firing, until they crowned the ridge: the end of their movement was under a terrible artillery fire from Soult’s reserve batteries, which were used till the last possible moment to cover the flying infantry. The fusiliers lost more than half their numbers—1,045 out of 2,015 officers and men. Their gallant brigadier, Myers, was among the slain. Werlé’s three regiments had casualties of well over 1,800 out of 5,600 present—a bigger total but a much smaller percentage—one in three instead of the victors’ one in two.

The rout of the French reserves would have settled the fate of the battle in any case; but already it was won on the summit of the plateau also. For at the same moment when the Fusiliers closed, Abercrombie’s brigade had wheeled in upon the right of the much-disordered mass that represented the 5th Corps, and, when they followed up their volleys with a charge, Girard’s and Gazan’s men ran to the rear along the heights, leaving Hoghton’s exhausted brigade lying dead in line in front of them. The fugitives of the 5th Corps mingled with those from Werlé’s brigade, and all passed the Chicapierna brook in one vast horde.

There was practically no pursuit: Latour-Maubourg threw his squadrons between the flying mass and the victorious Allies and the British and Portuguese halted on the heights that they had won. Soult’s last infantry reserve, the two grenadier battalions, were also drawn out on the nearer side of the Chicapierna, and suffered severely from the artillery fire of the Allies, losing 370 men out of 1,000 in twenty minutes. But Lumley’s cavalry could not meddle with Latour-Maubourg’s double strength, and it was not till some time had passed that Beresford brought up three Portuguese brigades in line—Collins, Fonseca, and Harvey—and finally pushed the enemy over the brook. By this moment Soult had got nearly all his artillery—forty guns—in line on the height between the two brooks, and their fire forbade further progress, unless Beresford were prepared to storm that position with the Portuguese. He refused to try it, and wisely; for though the enemy’s infantry were completely out of action, it is a formidable thing to deliver a frontal attack on six batteries flanked by 3,500 horse.

So finished the fight of Albuera; a drenching rain, similar to that which had been so deadly to Colborne’s brigade, ended the day, and made more miserable the lot of the 10,000 wounded who lay scattered over the hillsides. The British had hardly enough sound men left in half the battalions to pick up their own bleeding comrades, much less to bear off the mounds of French wounded, who lay along the slopes of the gentle dip where the battle had raged hardest. It was two days before the last of these were gathered in.

That Albuera was the most bloody of all the fights of the Peninsular War, in proportion to the numbers engaged, everybody knows. But the exact table of the losses on each side has never, I believe, been fully worked out. After studying the French returns in the Archives of the Paris Ministry of War and the Spanish figures at Madrid, no less than Beresford’s report, we get to the results which I have printed in the XVth Appendix to this volume.

Summarizing them, we find that the British, including Alten’s German battalions, had 10,449 men on the field. Their total loss was 206 officers and 3,953 men. Of these 882 were killed, 2,733 wounded, and 544 missing. Of this frightful casualty list no less than five-sixths belonged to the three brigades of Colborne, Hoghton, and Myers, for the cavalry and artillery, with Alten’s and Abercrombie’s brigades of infantry, though all seriously engaged, lost but 618 out of nearly 4,500 men present. The remaining 3,502 casualties all came from the ranks of the three first-named brigades, whose total strength on the field was but 5,732. Colborne’s brigade lost, in an instant as it were, under the charge of the lancers and hussars, seven-tenths of its numbers, 1,400 men out of 2,000. Of the 600 who were left standing, nearly half belonged to the 2/31st, the battalion which was not broken by the cavalry charge, and survived to join in Hoghton’s advance. The brigades of Hoghton and Myers were not, like Colborne’s, annihilated in one awful moment of disaster, but used up in continuous fighting at short musketry range, with an enemy of far superior numbers. The former (29th, 1/48th, 2/57th) took 1,650 officers and men into the field, and lost 1,044. The latter (the two battalions of the 7th Royal Fusiliers and the 1st battalion of the Welsh Fusiliers) had 2,015 combatants present, and lost 1,045. Hoghton’s troops, therefore, lost five-eighths, Myers’s one-half of their strength, and these were victorious units which hardly left a single prisoner in the enemy’s hands, and finally drove their adversaries from the field in spite of a twofold inequality of numbers. Truly Albuera is the most honourable of all Peninsular blazons on a regimental flag.

Of the 10,000 Portuguese, only Harvey’s brigade was seriously engaged; it had over 200 casualties[494] out of the 389 suffered on that day by troops of that nation, and established a most honourable record by its defeat of Latour-Maubourg’s dragoons. The other men killed or hurt were distributed in fives and tens over the battalions of Fonseca, Collins, and Campbell, which only came under fire in the last stage of the battle.

The Spaniards returned 1,368 casualties out of 14,000 present, of which (as we have already seen) no less than 615 were in those four battalions of Zayas’s division which held out so stubbornly against the 5th Corps, till Hoghton’s men came up to relieve them. Of the rest, Ballasteros’s and Lardizabal’s divisions, with under 300 casualties each, had only suffered from skirmishing or distant artillery fire. The losses of Carlos de España and the cavalry were insignificant.

The French losses can be made out with reasonable certainty after careful comparison of different returns in the Paris Archives. Soult had the shamelessness to assert in his dispatch to the Emperor that he had only 2,800 killed and wounded! But a tardily prepared and incomplete list drawn up on July 6th gave 6,000 casualties, of whom 900 were missing—wounded prisoners left on the allied position. Unfortunately this return, on examination, turns out to be far from satisfactory. Soult gives 262 officers killed, wounded, or missing, but the regimental returns when compiled show a much higher figure—359—and cannot possibly be wrong, since the name and rank of every officer hit is carefully recorded for documentary and official purposes.[495] But if 262 casualties among officers correspond (as the return of July 6th states) to 5,744 among the rank and file, then 362 officers hit must imply 7,900 men disabled, and this, we may conclude, was very near the real figure. Belmas and Lapéne, the most trustworthy French historians of the campaign, agree in giving 7,000, a thousand more than Soult conceded in his tardy and incomplete return. This proportion out of 24,000 men put in the field is sufficiently heavy, though exceeded so terribly by the 4,150 men lost out of 10,450 among the British troops. The units which suffered most heavily were the two divisions of the 5th Corps, which must have lost nearly 4,000 out of 8,400 present; Werlé’s reserve had probably close on 2,000 casualties, out of 5,600 bayonets; Godinot’s column and the cavalry had very considerable losses, but were the only troops fit for action next day. The 5th Corps was absolutely wrecked; in some battalions there were only three or four officers unhurt, and the losses were similar to those in Myers’s or Hoghton’s British brigades[496]. Two or three others had fared comparatively better, having been in the flank or rear at the time when the desperate musketry duel in the front was in progress. But the corps as a whole could not have been put in action on the 17th.

On the morning of that day each army sullenly formed line on its own side of the Albuera brook, but made no further movement. Beresford was prepared to fight another defensive battle, in the unlikely event of its being forced upon him[497], but was not willing to attack an enemy hidden behind a screen of woods, and possessed of a superior and still effective cavalry and artillery. Such an attack must have been delivered mainly by the Spanish and Portuguese infantry, since of the British only Abercrombie’s and Alten’s five battalions were fit for immediate service. The missing brigade of Kemmis arrived during the day, after a fatiguing march over the Jerumenha bridge, and added 1,400 bayonets more, but even so there would have been only 4,000 British infantry in full fighting trim; the sad relics of Hoghton’s and Colborne’s brigades were organized into two provisional battalions of 600 men each, where whole regiments were represented by one, two, or, at the most, three companies. Myers’s brigade had 1,000 men left, so was better off, but no general would have dreamed of using any of these troops for offensive action on the day after the battle. An attack would have had to be delivered by the 9,000 Portuguese infantry, backed by the Spaniards and Abercrombie, Alten, and Kemmis. Beresford refused to try it, even though he knew that Soult’s losses had been greater than his own, so far as mere numbers went; probably, he argued, Soult would retire covered by his cavalry and artillery if he were assailed. Covered by the woods, he could get off as he pleased. But Soult was certain to retire in any case, as news had now come to hand that Wellington was coming down to Elvas with two divisions[498], and might be expected there immediately—he actually arrived on the 19th; the head of his column had marched on the 14th, and reached Elvas on the 23rd. To risk anything in order to get Soult on the move a few days earlier was not worth while.

The French marshal was even further than Beresford from the idea of renewing operations on the 17th; he had shot his bolt and failed—the battle, so he declared, would never have been fought if he had known that Blake had joined the British on the night of the 15th. His main object in keeping his ground for a day was to organize the transport of a column of 5,000 wounded on to Seville; if he had retired at once, the greater part of them would have had to be abandoned. As it was, his transport was used up, and several hundreds of severe cases had to be left to the mercy of the Allies, in and about the chapel in the wood of Albuera. Beresford found them there on the morning of the 18th, for Soult commenced his retreat before dawn, some thirty-six hours after the battle was over. Gazan (himself wounded) and some 2,000 men from the regiments which had been most cut up guarded the convoy (which included the 500 British prisoners)[499], southward along the great chaussée. Soult himself, with the rest of the army, now reduced to 14,000 men at the most, retired by a more circuitous route, by Solana and Fuente del Maestre towards Llerena and the Sierra Morena. Beresford’s cavalry followed, but was unable to do anything in face of Latour-Maubourg’s preponderant squadrons. The allied infantry remained behind to resume the siege of Badajoz; on the 18th Hamilton’s division and Madden’s cavalry were sent back to invest the place, which was shut in again at dawn on the 19th, after having been relieved of the presence of the Allies for only three days (16th-17th-18th May). General Phillipon had employed this short respite in the useful task of levelling the allied trenches and batteries outside his works. He found nothing in them of which he could make booty, save the heavy wood employed for the gun-platforms before San Cristobal. The more valuable stores had all been removed to Elvas, the gabions and fascines burned by the 4th Division before it gave up the investment on the night of the 15th May.

That Albuera, with all its slaughter, was a battle in which both sides committed serious errors is generally acknowledged; but few are the general actions in which there is nothing to criticize on the part of the victor—much more of the vanquished. We must, however, protest against Napier’s sweeping assertion that ‘no general ever gained so great a battle with so little increase of military reputation as Marshal Beresford[500]. His triumph was disputed by the very soldiers who followed his car. Their censures have been reiterated without change and without abatement to this hour, and a close examination (while it detects many ill-founded observations and others tainted with malice) leaves little doubt that the general feeling was right[501].’ Napier then proceeds to argue that Beresford ought to have refused battle, and retired beyond the Guadiana, that his concentration was over-tardy, and that, considering the doubtful quality of Blake’s troops, he was too bold in fighting. His tactical dispositions were bad; ‘he occupied the position so as to render defeat almost certain’; he brought up his reserves in a succession of separate attacks, and hesitated too long to move the 4th Division. ‘Hardinge caused Cole and Abercrombie to win the victory;’ the guidance of a commanding mind was nowhere seen.

Napier was Beresford’s bitter enemy, and it is clear that his eloquent denunciations of the Marshal were inspired by a personal animosity which clouded his judgement. His account of Albuera is one of the finest pieces of military writing in the English language, but it bristles with mistakes, many of them worked in so as to throw additional discredit on his enemy’s capacity[502]. One turns naturally to investigate Wellington’s observations on the fight, made when he had ridden over the field on May 21st, only five days after the battle. In one private letter he writes, ‘We had a very good position, and I think should have gained a complete victory without any material loss, if the Spaniards could have manœuvred; but unfortunately they cannot.’ In another he says, ‘The Spanish troops behaved admirably, I understand. They stood like stocks while both parties were firing into them, but they were quite immovable, and this was the great cause of all our losses. After they had lost their position, the natural thing to do would have been to attack it with the nearest Spanish troops, but these could not be moved. The British troops [2nd Division] were next, and they were brought up (and must in such cases always be brought up), and they suffered accordingly.’

Wellington’s opinion therefore was that Blake’s slowness in guarding against the flank attack was the real cause of all the trouble. Considering the gallant way in which Zayas’s four battalions fought, when once they were in line, it certainly seems that if thrice the force which that officer was given had been thrown back en potence across the heights, as Beresford desired, at the moment that Soult’s movement was detected, they would have held their own so effectively that the British 2nd Division could have come up at leisure, and in order, to support the Spaniards. As it was, the reinforcements sent over-late by Blake to help Zayas arrived by driblets, and gave him little help, falling into a mere tiraillade with the French light troops on Zayas’s left, instead of engaging in the main battle.

After Blake’s slowness the main cause of loss was William Stewart’s over-haste. Beresford had given orders that the whole 2nd Division was to form up in a second line behind Zayas, and go into action simultaneously, outflanking the massed 5th Corps on either wing. Stewart, combining over-zeal and want of discipline, attacked with the first brigade that came up, while the second and the third were still remote. He also, if several contemporaries are to be trusted, refused to listen to Colonel Colborne’s request to be allowed to keep a unit in square or column, to protect the flank of the 1st brigade when it started out to make its attack[503], and it was the want of this flank-guard alone which made the charge of the Polish lancers so effective. As Beresford’s vindicator writes, ‘The Marshal had directed Sir William Stewart to form the second line; he could not distrust an officer of his experience, zeal, and knowledge of the service.’ That his subordinate should be struck with sudden battle-fury, and attack the French flank with one isolated brigade, contrary to his orders, cannot be imputed as a crime to Beresford, who was in no way responsible for it. The move, and the disaster that followed within a few minutes, took place without his knowledge. As he was endeavouring to put in line the Spanish battalions which were coming up to reinforce Zayas, he was surprised by being charged in the midst of his staff by a knot of the lancers, who a minute before had ridden over Colborne’s men on his right. It is clear that if the three brigades of the 2nd Division had been properly arranged and put into action simultaneously, as Beresford intended, the 5th Corps would have been driven from the heights an hour before it actually yielded. Girard’s division had already wellnigh exhausted itself upon Zayas’s stubborn resistance, and it was only the interval in the allied attack, caused by the destruction of Colborne’s brigade, which permitted Gazan’s troops to get up into the front line, in such order as they could, in time to fight Hoghton and Abercrombie. If Stewart’s advance had been made at the proper time, he would have come upon the two French divisions at the very moment when they were making their confused change of front. They could not have resisted the assault, considering the disorder in which they were mingled. Soult, who had just made up his mind to discontinue the offensive battle in which he was engaged[504], would certainly have used Werlé’s reserve only to cover his retreat, and would have withdrawn from a position which had become desperate, covered by his cavalry.

The one point in which Napier’s charges against Beresford have some foundation is that there was undoubtedly much delay in putting Cole and the 4th Division into action. This, as we have shown above, was caused by Beresford’s wish to strike the final blow at the 5th Corps with Hamilton’s Portuguese, whom he had ordered to the front after Colborne’s disaster, and who did not make their appearance, partly because the first aide-de-camp sent for them was wounded on the way, partly because Hamilton had changed his position, and was not found at once by later messengers. When it became evident that the delay was growing dangerous, Beresford would have done well to send Cole orders to advance at once, and to have directed Abercrombie also to charge. Napier is right in saying that ‘Hardinge caused Cole to win the victory,’ for Cole’s advance was made without Beresford’s orders, and even contrary to his intention, since he had sent for Alten and the Portuguese to make the final stroke. But while they were being collected, Hoghton’s brigade had been practically used up, and there was nothing but Zayas’s reformed but exhausted battalions in Hoghton’s rear, to form the allied centre. It is true, however, that, supposing the last relics of the ‘Die-hards’ and their comrades had finally recoiled, there would have been no push or impetus left in their opponents of the 5th Corps, who were a spent force, in complete disorder, and with hardly one man in two left standing. While they were disentangling themselves for a final effort, Collins’s and Fonseca’s Portuguese, perfectly trustworthy troops and absolutely fresh, would have been getting into position. It is practically certain that Soult would have made no further attempt to go forward. His own dispatch states that he had abandoned all offensive intentions. This much Beresford’s advocates may plead; but it remains true that the moral impression of Albuera would have been very different if the charge of the Fusilier brigade had never taken place. It was their triumphant sweeping away of Werlé’s reserve which struck dismay into the enemy. If it had never occurred, Soult would have retired, foiled indeed, but in good order, and with two or three thousand fewer casualties than he actually suffered.

In criticizing the operations of the French, the main point which strikes us is that Soult stands self-convicted of hesitation and divided purpose in the crisis of the battle. His attack had been admirable; the movement which threw four-fifths of his available force unexpectedly on to Beresford’s flank was beautifully designed and carried out. But when, in the check and pause that followed the incident of Colborne’s disaster, he realized (as he himself says) that he had 30,000 men and not 20,000 to fight, and that ‘the odds were no longer fair,’ he should have made up his mind either to withdraw under cover of his splendid cavalry, or else to risk all, and throw his infantry reserves straight into the fight, before the enemy’s line was reformed. He did neither, but, as he says, ‘giving up his original project, aimed at nothing more than retaining the ground already won.’ What use was half a mile of hillside to him, if he had failed to break the Allies and drive them off the position which covered the road to Badajoz? He deserved the beating that he got for this extraordinary resolve.

As to the details of the French tactics, Girard was responsible for the dense order of the 5th Corps, which told so fatally on his men. But in arranging them as he did, he was but adopting the method that most other French generals were wont to use. Accustomed to break through the lines of Continental armies by the impetus of a solid mass, and not by musketry fire, he prepared to employ the normal shock-tactics of the ‘column of divisions.’ It may be even noticed that, more enlightened than many of his comrades, he used the ordre mixte recommended by Napoleon, in which some battalions in three-deep line were interspersed among the columns. His array was better than that of Victor at Barrosa or Talavera, or that of Reynier and Ney at Bussaco. But he had never met the British line before—this was the first time that the 5th Corps saw the red-coats—and he did not know the unwelcome truth that Reille told Napoleon before Waterloo: ‘Sire, l’infanterie anglaise en duel c’est le diable.’ There was, no doubt, extra confusion caused by the fact that the 2nd Division of the corps closed up too near to the first, so that the passage des lignes, when it was brought up to the front with the idea of passing it through the intervals of the shattered regiments of the van, was even more disorderly than was necessary. But the crucial mistake, repeated by every French general throughout the war, was to come on in column at all against the British line. Girard did no worse than his contemporaries, and the gallant obstinacy of his troops enabled him to inflict very heavy losses upon the victors.

Latour-Maubourg has sometimes been accused of making insufficient use of his great mass of cavalry. But till the last stage of the battle he had in front of him not merely Lumley’s squadrons, but the whole 4th Division. To attack a force of all arms, in a good position, with cavalry alone would have been dangerous. If he had failed, the flank of the 5th Corps would have been laid open in the most disastrous fashion. Probably he was right to be satisfied in ‘containing’ with his 3,500 horse 7,000 men, 5,000 of them good infantry, belonging to the enemy. His brilliant stroke at Colborne’s brigade is enough to save his reputation as a battle-general, though (as we have said before) he was no strategist. By this alone he had done more for Soult than any other French officer upon the field.

The real hero, most undoubtedly, of the whole fight was Sir Lowry Cole, who showed as much moral courage in striking in, on his own responsibility, at the critical moment, as he did practical skill in conducting his two brigades against the enemy opposed to him—a most formidable adversary who showed twenty-six squadrons of cavalry opposed to one of his wings, and the 5,600 bayonets of Werlé’s infantry opposed to the other. With Harvey’s Portuguese he drove off the cavalry charge, with Myers’s Fusiliers he beat to pieces the heavy columns of the French reserve. It was a great achievement, and the General was worthy of his soldiers, no less than the soldiers of their General. He was well seconded by Lumley, who justified in the most splendid way his sudden appointment to the command of the cavalry of the whole army only a few hours before the battle.

NOTE

The result of a four hours’ visit to the field of Albuera, on a very hot day in April 1907, was to prove to me that Napier had no idea of its topography, while Beresford in his Strictures on Colonel Napier’s History, 1833, describes it very well. I could see no trace of several things on which Napier lays stress, especially the ‘ravine’ behind the British position. Nearly the whole of the field is now arable—it was covered thickly with small red poppies, when I visited it, in which four ploughs were cutting long seams, turning up a thin soil of a chocolate brown hue.