The Man Who Broke Napoleon's Codes (34 page)

Salamanca's strange atmosphere that 17 June, became all the more peculiar when the French defenders started to use their guns. The center of the city echoed their fire and citizens who had one minute been running to greet the British were sent scurrying for their lives the next as projectiles whizzed overhead.

Having put the 6th Division into positions around the forts, Wellington pushed the rest of the army beyond the city, using two fords to cross the Tormes. He knew Marmont was not far away, since he had cleared out just ahead of him during the early hours of the morning.

Wellington had begun calculating the strength of the forces opposed to him with an almost obsessive diligence, knowing that he would not attack if he was outnumbered. On setting out a few days earlier, on 13 June, he had assumed that he would have a comfortable superiority over Marmont. He had been concerned however to receive an intercepted letter the following day that contained,
en clair,
nothing less than the army of Portugal's Morning State for 1 April. This precise listing of every man available for duty in each regiment showed that the duke of Ragusa's army numbered 51,492 in all, made up of 43,396
infantry, 3,204 cavalry and 3,393 artillery. The British commander had written to Lieutenant General Graham, “notwithstanding that the enemy is considerably stronger than I believed he was, I propose to continue our present movement forward.”

He had penned that before observing the Salamanca forts. Now that he knew their strength his worries surfaced again. Wellington understood that Marmont had not yet concentrated these 51,492 men and needed time to do so. By placing the Salamanca forts in Wellington's way, he might just delay the British enough to allow him to unite the entire Army of Portugal.

On the day the British entered Salamanca, Wellington calculated that the enemy field army was not more than 47,800 (in fact it was considerably less). But when the British commander totted up how many troops he could bring to the Tormes plains beyond the city, he would have to subtract his own 6th Division, which would have to be left behind to cover the city's forts, and it was possible that the British force might then no longer outnumber Marmont. What was more, Wellington knew from messages intercepted in the Army of Portugal cipher (which was still in use in this area) that the last of Marmont's forces, Bonnet's division, was probably only two or three marches away. Taking a deliberately cautious view, Wellington calculated that by 19 or 20 June his opponent could meet him with a superiority of four thousand to five thousand men. All of this undermined the initial confidence with which the British general had struck into Spain. Wellington did not intend to give battle on inferior terms, unless he was in one of those strong defensive positions that he could choose so well.

Wellington believed that Marmont's sense of honor would require him to do something to save the men in the forts. He therefore decided to search out a strong defensive position where such intentions might cause his enemy to throw the Army of Portugal onto a strong British defense. He found it a few miles northeast of Salamanca where the ridge of San Christoval commands the rolling country of the city's hinterland. There he marched his men into fields of waist-high corn, onto the ridge. Monsieur le Marechal was most welcome to present himself here and learn the same lesson Marshal Masséna, his predecessor, had at Busaco.

In the duke of Ragusa's camp, the numbers looked a good deal less encouraging even than they did to Wellington. Marmont knew that the force he had concentrated and had immediately available did not much exceed thirty thousand, since they had not been coming together as quickly as he had hoped. The new circumstances would oblige him to move forward and, as the emperor might put it, show an imposing attitude. As for actually giving battle, this could not be considered until he had brought in his last divisions and hopefully some additional reinforcements from the Army of the North. Having seen his troops gathered and in motion across the plains, he had every confidence in their abilities. The men of the Army of Portugal included many veterans, and they were inured to hard marching. Their officers had drilled their men to the point that a sudden change of formation or an order to turn an entire division through right angles and then assume a defensive position could be carried out with swiftness and precision.

Among the rank and file, Marmont was a popular leader. The soldiers sometimes chanted a song from the Austrian campaign three years earlier. One of its verses went:

Loosely translated, it meant “France appointed [Marshal] MacDonald, the army appointed Oudinot and friendship appointed Marmont.” It celebrated their marshal's march hundreds of miles from the Balkans to join Napoleon on the Danube in 1809. One officer noted that Marmont “was most courageous and very much loved for the care he took of the soldiers.” The spirits of the French lower ranks were raised by the idea that they were on their way to an honorable affair with the English, rather than having to put up with more of the bitter counter-guerrilla fight in the Spanish countryside. Just as the British footslogger corrupted the names of his adversaries (the duke of Dalmatia becoming the duke of Damnation), the French infantry, as they marched across the Castillian fields, cursed Wellington as
Vilainjeton,
a phrase that suggested both meanness and duplicity. The senior officers of this force saw
matters somewhat differently, and many openly questioned their chief's abilities, but Marmont knew he could rely on them to act with their customary professionalism.

It was this faith in his army's abilities, particularly of maneuver, that conditioned Marmont's approach to his confrontation with Wellington. He would send divisions this way and that, try to outflank the English, conduct night marches, whatever: the aim would be to open a gap between two British corps so that they could not support one another. Or he might disorder some formation by forcing it to turn about in some rough country, perhaps before a river. At this point he would fall upon them, concentrating his own force at a weak point and breaking one or two of Wellington's outlying divisions, just as he had nearly succeeded in doing at El Bodon in September 1811. Marmont summed up this strategy in a letter to King Joseph: “I will maneouvre about Salamanca in such a way as to divide or set in motion the English army and profit from that.”

On 20 June, at about 4
P.M
., Marmont marched into sight of the San Christoval position. There was a flurry of activity atop the ridge as British officers scrambled for their telescopes. They could see three columns on parallel tracks marching toward them. The sandy soil crumbled under the weight of these tramping feet, sending a cloud of ochre dust into the sky behind each phalanx.

Wellington's staff galloped about, trying to seek a better vantage point, conferring with one another. How many regiments do you make it, Somerset? Do you see that officer, followed by his suite on the left there, is that Marmont?

The British general looked down: battle could now be joined very quickly indeed. Some cannon fire into the heads of the French columns to disorder them, followed by a brisk movement downhill from half a dozen Allied divisions. He might catch the French before they'd even had a chance to deploy from their lines of march, hammering the columns at the front, and sending broken battalions fleeing backward, breaking up the formations behind.

The staff looked to their chief, waiting for him to start scribbling directives and send them galloping to every corner of the army. Wellington kept his counsel. No attack was ordered. Only a very few men, De Lancey, Somerset and Scovell among them, could have
guessed the reasons for his hesitation, for only they were versed in the secret business of headquarters. Wellington could not believe that Marmont was offering battle with what seemed to be no more than thirty thousand men. There must be two or three divisions unaccounted for, which, the general knew from intercepted letters, must be with Marmont soon. Even if Bonnet had been delayed by Spanish attacks, Wellington had to assume his and the other missing troops would be up, sooner or later. Might they suddenly appear on one of his flanks, at some point that could even threaten the British line of communications?

As the French began deploying from column of march and taking up positions, in some places no more than five hundred yards in front, their batteries began sending shot into the British lines, sending some dragoons somersaulting backward off their mounts, dead before they'd hit the ground. Another ball whizzed overhead of the 79th Highlanders, causing one ambitious young officer to note dryly, “a round shot, 8lbs, went very near Major Lawrie who stands in my way for promotion!” At the foot of the ridge, a sharp fusillade between skirmishers began; the British were being forced back. Some green troops of the 68th were forced out of a village at the right of the British position. Wellington summoned his generals.

The light faded as the divisional commanders clustered around their chief: Cotton in his outlandish hussar's uniform; Baron Alten, the German commanding the Light Division; Picton (whose disregard of dress regulations meant he usually wore a top hat, civilian coat and carried an umbrella); Leith and Cole. Wellington stood with his map, outlining the enemy dispositions and the action to be taken should Marmont attack at one point or another. Seeing this group, the French gunners could not resist this tempting target. With a bang and a whoosh they started sending cannonballs toward Wellington and his generals with that distinctive ripping sound they all knew only too well. “Very little confusion was occasioned,” noted one of those present. “His Lordship moved a few paces and continued his directions.”

Coolness under fire was one thing, but did Wellington have the mettle to fall upon the army that Marmont had laid open in front of him?

At dawn on the twenty-first, the artillery fire and skirmishing
were rejoined. The British troops had slept on beds of flattened corn, their muskets by their sides, ready for anything that might happen in the night. In the light of day, their officers could see that the French had barricaded two villages at the base of the ridge, turning them into strongpoints.

And still, Wellington was wondering: Is Brennier up? Where is Bonnet? He was also still deeply concerned than the Count D'Erlon, with his corps of fifteen thousand, might appear somewhere in his rear, racing up from positions further south, opposite Lieutenant General Hill in Estremadura.

Later that day, two French deserters were brought in and interrogated. Bonnet was expected at any moment with eight thousand men, they said. With that, the general resolved: He was not going to attack Marmont and would take steps to protect his flanks or rear. He pulled the Light Division back a couple of miles to secure a line of withdrawal, one of the fords over the Tormes.

The reluctance to attack, especially on the twentieth when less than half of Marmont's force had shown itself, disappointed many officers in the army, including Scovell, who wrote, “Had it taken place, I have little doubt of the event, as we have since learnt they had but 15,000 [sic] Bayonets in the Field, nor do I think their Columns could have deployed before we should have been upon them.”

As the second day of this impasse ended, Marmont convened a meeting of his own generals. The marshal's old classmate General Foy was among them and recorded this council of war. As Wellington had anticipated, one of the main arguments concerned the need to rescue the Army of Portugal's troops in the Salamanca forts a few miles away. Marmont intimated that they must try to force their way through, but sought the opinions of others. Foy kept his counsel and waited to see what the others would say. Most of them seemed to second their chief's resolution. Then it was Clausel's turn. Anyone who had been at Busaco, where Masséna had come unstuck in 1810, knew the folly of attacking Wellington on such a strong defensive feature, he said. They did not have the numbers to defeat him. They would be exposing themselves to an inglorious defeat. The mention of Busaco was
enough to turn the mood of the meeting; Maucune and Foy had both taken bullets there. Foy recorded his own contribution: “I thought that just because we had left a garrison of 400 in the Salamanca Fort, there was no point getting 6,000 killed and hazarding the honor of our arms to get them out … the Marshal was unhappy; he thought the generals were conspiring against his plans.” Marmont may have been secretly quite pleased, but he had to affect this attitude if for no other reason than it would have seemed callous to abandon the garrison of the fort.

When all was said and done, Marmont, Foy and the other divisional generals knew that a substantial reinforcement was needed to guarantee victory. They understood well enough to expect nothing from the “Sultan of Andalucia,” as they disparaged Soult. The Army of the North would have to help, perhaps that of the Center also, although Joseph's force could only deploy a few thousand troops.