THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON AND THE COMMAND OF THE SPANISH ARMY, 1812-14 Also by Charles J. Esdaile THE SPANISH ARMY IN THE PENINSULAR WAR The Duke of Wellington and the Com.m.and of the Spanish ArnlY 1812-14 Charles J. Esdaile Palgrave Macmillan ISBN 978-1-349-20704-6 ISBN 978-1-349-20702-2 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-20702-2 © Charles J. Esdaile, 1990 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1s t edition 1990 All rights reserved. For infonnation, write: Scholarly and Reference Division, St. Martin's Press, Inc., 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 First published in the United States of America in 1990 ISBN 978-0-312-03536-5 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Esdaile, Charles J. The Duke of Wellington and the command of the Spanish Army, 1812-14/Charles J. Esdaile. p. cm. Bibliography: p. Includes index. ISBN 978-0-312-03536-5 1. Peninsular War, 1807-14-Campaigns-Spain. 2. Wellington, Arthur Wellesley, Duke of, 1769-1852-Military leadership. 3. Spain-History, Military. 4. Spain. Ejercito-History-19th century. I. Title. DC232.E73 1990 940.2'7-dc20 89-34295 CIP In loving memory of my father, Martin Kennedy Esdaile, and of my good friend, Andrzej Roman Ciupka, who both died whilst this book was being written. Requiescant in pace Contents List of Figures viii Preface ix Acknowledgements xii 1 An Unhappy Alliance 1 2 The Making of a Generalissimo 27 3 Protest and Retreat, September-November 1812 59 4 An Interlude at Cidiz 85 5 From Cadiz to Vitoria, January-June 1813 108 6 Crisis in the Pyrenees, July-December 1813 136 7 Victory and Retribution, January-June 1814 166 Appendix 1: Organisation of the Spanish Army, November 1812 182 Appendix 2: Organisation of the Spanish Army, [uly 1813 186 Notes and Referenc;es 190 Seleet Bibliography 219 Index 228 vii List of Figures 1 The Iberian Peninsula xiv 2 The Pyrenean Theatre of Operations 137 viii Preface In 1983 the papers of the first Duke of Wellington were deposited at the University of 50uthampton. In order to promote the use of this collection it was decided to establish the Post-Doctoral Fellowship of which the author has been the incumbent, and this book the result. 50 why another book on the Duke of Wellington? After all, there are few figures of nineteenth-century British his tory who have attracted such attention: as the Duke himself complained, 'I have been much exposed to authors.' His career has been the subject of at least three major biographies in this century alone, his military campaigns have been refought ad infinitum, and various aspects of his life treated to detailed thematic analysis. Most recently Neville Thompson has published a fine study of Wellington's statesman ship which also sheds much light on his enigmatic character, whilst Paddy Griffith has edited an interesting collection of essays on his generalship. Yet, for all that, certain aspects of the Duke's career remain relatively unknown, one of these being his tenure of the command of the 5panish army between 1812 and 1814. A glance at previous Wellingtonia will reveal that this has received no more than a passing mention, and yet control of the Spaniards ca me to be regarded by the Duke as a sine qua non for the ejection of the French from the Peninsula. An important object of British strategy long be fore 1812, the command also became a serious bone of contention, and continued to poison relations between the allies even when it was finally conceded by the 5paniards. 50 severe were the tensions provoked by Wellington's appointment, in fact, that at one point the Anglo-5panish alliance seemed to be on the brink of collapse. Important though it is, none of this has received much attention. Cynics might argue that the answer is that the story is less than creditable: Wellington himself can be seen to have adopted tactics that were as clumsy as they were counter-productive, whilst the behaviour of his troops was such as to cause deep resentment ix x Preface amongst the Spaniards. To paraphrase Sir Arthur Bryant, the Pen insular army's readiness to lark may indeed have been an index of its readiness to fight, but when its practieal jokes - not to mention drunken savagery - were directed at the inhabitants, and, above aIl, the Catholic religion, the effect on inter-allied relations was distinctly deleterious. The problem, of course, was not one sided, for the Spaniards were all too often xenophobie and over proud, but the fact remains that the British troops did little to lessen their commander's diffieulties. Unpalatable though the facts may be, there are also practieal reasons why the story of Welling ton's command of the Spanish army should have gone untold. In the first place, its understanding required a knowledge of Spanish polities that was often unavailable to historians writing from a British point of view. At the same time, much damage was also done by the fact that the published editions of Wellington's corre spondence - the source used for much of the previous work on the Duke - omitted the numerous Spanish and Portuguese documents contained in his papers, without whieh it would have been impossible to write this study. If previous work on the Duke of Wellington has left a gap whieh justifies this book, the present study also provides an interesting case-study of the problems faced by a coalition general. Although the Duke may not have handled his Spanish allies with all the finesse that was required, he mayaIso be seen to have been in an unenviable position. Determined to make something of the Span ish army, his chances of success were constantly undermined by the desire of Cabinet Ministers and commercial interests alike to obtain a measure of free trade with the Spanish empire, their efforts serving only to in flame hispanic opinion against the Duke. With domestie requirements in confliet with the dietates of the situation in the field, the need for some form of strategie co ordination was already becoming dear a century before the First World War finally made it a necessity. In writing a work of analysis, the author has for obvious reasons been unable to dweIl on the details of military operations. For further details the reader is referred to Oman, failing whieh the works of Glover, Gates and Weller will also be found to be helpful primers. Of these, the most useful is undoubtedly that of David Gates, in that it is the only English-Ianguage, single-volume his tory of the war to pay due attention to the Spanish struggle. 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