With the Russia campaign, we’re coming rather quickly to the end of the First French Empire. In fact, it’s going to unravel rather shockingly quickly, considering how long it took to build, and the potential power held within it. This week, we start in Spain, with the end of the French Puppet Kingdom there.
The Road to Salamanca
While Torres Vedras an Fuentes de Onoro weren’t decisive victories- in fact, they barely shifted the situation in Spain at all- they did change attitudes in Britain towards the campaign. While operations to relieve the Spanish at Cadiz were largely failures, Wellington’s efforts proved that keeping pressure in the Peninsula was worth pursuing. It also showed Wellington was the right man for the job, and that Lisbon would be an excellent base of operations for further operations into Spain. This led to reinforcement of Wellington’s army, and supplies flooding into Portugal.
To secure his base in Portugal, Wellington needed to capture the fortresses guarding the routes into Portugal. In January, 1812, he stormed the fortress at Cuidad Rodriguez, and, in April, Badajoz. With the forward fortress guarding his base of operations secure, Wellington then turned back north. Marshall Auguste de Marmont, who had taken over the army of Portugal after Massena was sacked after Fuentes de Onoro, has entered northern Portugal on Napoleon’s orders. Wellington’s approach, however, caused Marmont to give up the offensive into Portugal- an enterprise he wasn’t too keen on anyway.
Wellington pursued Marmont, who fell back on his major supply base, Salamanca. Marmont, in turning the town into the depot, had made several major improvements to its fortifications as well. Marmont retreated past the city in early June, knowing the fortress would force Wellington to stop. On Jun 22, 1812, Wellington closed in on the city and began preparing to take the fortress. With Wellington so engrossed in the siege, Marmont turned about and marched back to Salamanca, catching Wellington between the town and the French.
For the next few weeks, Wellington and Marmont maneuvered their armies around Salamanca, waiting for an advantage, or for one of them to make a mistake. On July 22nd, Marmont made that mistake, opening a gap between his center and left flank as he adjusted his position. Wellington seized upon the moment, driving his army into the gap in a rapid, well coordinated maneuver that Marmont could not really reply to. The French broke after a couple of hours, retreating away from Salamanca. It also left the road to Madrid open.
With word that Wellington stood unopposed on the road to his capital, Joseph decided to abandon the city rather than try and hold it. Marmont continued retreating northward after Salamanca. With Madrid in British hands, the French armies besieging Cadiz and working in Asturias were both about to be cut off from supply. The French abandoned those positions, moving north to link up with Joseph. Unable to prevent this junction, Wellington attempted to pursue Joseph before it could happen. However, Jourdan kept Wellington off his back long enough to get reinforced, and, in the Autumn of 1812, the weight of this much longer army forced Wellington to retreat, first to Madrid, then, all the way back to Cuidad Rodriguez, where he had started the year.
The 1813 Offensive
The winter of 1812-13 marked a reversal in the size and composition of armies in the Peninsula. For most of the campaign, the French held the upper hand in overall numbers of men, numbers of veteran troops, territory held, and a number of other factors that made any but the most conservative approaches too risky for the British. However, Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow and his preparations for the German Campaign of 1813 changed that. Desperate for veteran troops to support the vast class of fresh conscripts he pulled into service, Napoleon stripped Spain of veterans and equipment, forcing Jourdan and Joseph to face Wellington with less.
Meanwhile, more troops came to Wellington. A large number of British troops arrived. His British-trained Portuguese troops were now veterans of several battles, and quite reliable as well. Spanish men flocked to fight the French- some came to Wellington, but many more went to Cadiz in the south and Corruna in the north, where the British could send arms, uniforms and munitions by the convoy load in order to support the armies. By the spring, these armies were ready to support British action in Spain against France.
The Spanish armies in Corruna meant that Wellington no longer had to rely only on Lisbon for supply. In 1813, Wellington decided to shift his base in supply to Corruna and the ports in northern Spain. This meant that he did not have to advance into central Spain and face the main French army around Madrid in another battle that wouldn’t get anywhere. Instead, Wellington decided to go for the throat of the French position in Spain- Great Road that crossed the Pyrenees and on which all French supply moved. With his army astride that route, the entire French position in Spain would be completely untenable. Either he could outmanever the French and win a bloodless massive victory, or, at the very least, force the French to fight a battle on his terms in the hills of Catalonia. To make this happen, Wellington lightened the loads of his army considerably, relying on well organized supply trains to carry supply from the coasts rather than his men or carts in the army, and relying on his veteran’s willingness, and his recruit’s eagerness, to endure hardship and discomfort on the march to move quickly.
Wellington kicked his offensive off on May 22nd, splitting his army into two supporting columns to move even more quickly. He advanced 200 miles in a month, capturing several important French depots and fortresses without a serious fight. Joseph retreated along the Great Road. He pulled as many troops along as he could- as well as a twelve mile baggage train that supplied his court- mostly full of loot he took from Spain to support himself back in Spain and to help fund Napoleon’s war in Germany. In late June, this train hit the town of Vitoria, where it had to work its way through the town, forcing the army to halt. The area looked like a good place to make a stand. The army was in a valley, where it could anchor its southern flank along some impassible hills, and on the north along an uncrossable river.
The Battle of Vitoria
The French took up their positions on June 20th to guard the road into Vitoria. Jourdan, King Joseph’s military advisor and effective head of the army, had fallen ill during the campaign, and only gave general orders for his subordinates to deploy the army. He had 60,000 men and 151 guns, and he also expected more reinforcements to come in the next few days. The narrow valley near Vitoria forced Jourdan to deploy in, effectively, three lines. One line stood at the entry into the valley, another slightly behind it, where the Zardorro River made a tight, almost hairpin bend, and third where the valley widened outside Vitoria. All of these lines were anchored on the Pueblo Heights to the south, largely considered impassible, and the Zardorro River. However, because he was ill, and his orders were general, the crossings across the Zardorro, particularly the bridges at Tres Puentes on the flank of the second line, were left intact. Given their position, neither the first French line, nor the second, really took responsibility for defending them, and Jourdan’s illness prevented him from redressing the issue. Overall, the French believed the river largely uncrossable anyway.
Wellington never met a river he couldn’t cross, dating all the way back to his first independent victory, Assaye. Rather than make frontal assault through three lines of French troops with anchored flanks (Only the Romans could get away with that kind of tomfoolery) Wellington decided to cross the Zardorro in order to flank the French in multiple crossings. He split his army into two columns- the same columns he had used to get to Vitoria. He would command the first column, which would attack the first French line at the entry to the valley, then work its way around to a crossing to flank that force. The second, under Thomas Graham, who had commanded the defense and relief of Cadiz after others had failed, would march long around the French flank to cross the river by Vitoria, and fall behind the French army, cutting it off and cutting the Great Road out of Spain. Wellington split his 80,000 men roughly evenly for the attack.
Wellington opened the action by attacking he first French line at 0800. His forces first fixed the French position, then assaulted the impassible Heights of Pueblo. The heights proved rather passable, in practice, and the French reacted by moving reinforcements in to try to stop the British flanking maneuver first, then retake the heights. The duel over the heights would last much of the day, as the French made repeated, failed assaults, to gain the heights against determined Spanish and British defense.
Meanwhile, at 1000, part of Graham’s column had arrived at the crossings north of Vitoria, and began moving across the bridges. Hearing that the British were making an attack against his flank, Jourdan quickly redeployed his third line back to Vitoria to stop the attack. The British forces were able to gain a lodgement, but couldn’t break the developing French defense. Graham shifted his attack first further upriver, but couldn’t force a decision in those places, either. He then decided to wait until the afternoon, bringing up his guns to make a formal, organized assault in the mid afternoon.
Meanwhile, Wellington looked for another way around the flank of the first French line. He sent the Light Division to find a ford, which helped push the French line back further by noon. He also sent riders out to find out where the troops that were supposed to attack between his troops and Graham’s men. These divisions had gotten a bit lost and confused in the march. The runners found one division, the 3rd, and Picton, it’s commander, decided to find any bridge he could find and cross the river, then figure things out. He discovered from the Spaniards living nearby that the Bridges of Tres Puentas were largely unguarded, and Picton stormed them, while the 4th Division heard the gunfire and marched to support Picton. These troops led an attack around noon that forced the French back further, mushing the first and second French lines together into a defensive position. Both armies were in something of an L shape, bent around Vitoria and the Royal Road to France. By 1500, Wellington had a firm enough grasp on the situation to launch a series of coordinated attacks across the line, particularly up the road to Vitoria. The French commanders in front of Wellington refused to coordinate their defense, and were largely unready for the coordinated series of attacks. By 1700, the French army broke, with the French in the north fighting a desperate rearguard to keep the British from crushing the fugitives.
The defeat of the French in Vitoria proved final. The remains of the army, along with Joseph and Jourdan, fled north as rapidly as they could, only finally reforming once in France. Wellington cut the road to France in the Pyrenees, and the remaining French troops began to give in to Spanish mopping up operations. Wellington crossed into France later in 1813, and would take up operations in 1814 to capture several French cities in the south of France.
The victory at Vitoria earned Wellington his final promotion, to Field Marshal, and his further elevation to the Duke of Wellington. In the looting that followed the battle, his troops recovered Jourdan’s marshal’s baton, and gave it to Wellington as a prize. He also took the collection of Spanish Masters that Joseph has stolen, and brought them back to decorate his house in England. Quite the haul for such a major victory.
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