Rifles - Mark Urban [123]
The Army moved ahead in three great columns, forcing back the French in a great movement across the north of Spain towards the Ebro and the Pyrenean frontier. Three times the French, trying desperately to regroup their forces, attempted to block the British on a river line in their path, but three times the right of the French line was turned by Wellington, sending his men through inhospitable mountain country which many had thought impracticable for an advance. During one of these outflanking movements the hussars distinguished themselves in a combat with the enemy rearguard and this was enough to silence most of the Light Bobs. As for the Household regiments, they continued to excite the contempt and, it must be said, the envy of the veterans, if for no other reason than because of the absurdly well-fed appearance of their huge mounts, the average Rifles officer having become used to his $40 nag with its scrawny neck and sagging back.
On 7 June, in Palencia, matters reached the point of open abuse. Here, the Household Cavalry enjoyed the acclamations and cheering of the liberated populace so much that they held up the rest of the Army. ‘The Household Troops’, wrote George Hennell of the 43rd, ‘paraded the streets such as they did Piccadilly for they went up one, down another, up again, so whether it was a mistake or not I do not know, but this I know, they kept our baggage an hour in the streets and we were waiting for breakfast all the time very impatiently.’
The Army of 1813 was very different to that of 1809. It was not just that the soi-disant elite had finally deigned to join the fray, but the doctrines of using light troops and riflemen extensively for every type of demanding task had gained supremacy. When Craufurd disembarked his brigade four years before, his reinforcement meant the Army had two battalions of riflemen (the 1st of the 95th as well as the 5th/60th) and two of light infantry. The reinforcements sought by Wellington over the years meant that in May 1813, it had three battalions of 95th, three of foreign riflemen, six battalions of light infantry, and eleven of Portuguese Cacadores (most of whom carried rifles). Although Wellington remained a military conservative in many respects, his experience in command of the 95th since the Baltic expedition of 1807 and Portuguese campaign of 1808 had convinced him of the intrepidity and fighting qualities of such forces.
With its phalanxes of light troops (infantry and cavalry) the British Army moved across northern Spain with unparalleled speed. The French had derided them, in the spring of 1811 and at other times, for timidity or slowness, but by mid-June 1813 they were being pursued back, harassed all the way, to a defensive line which would mark their final chance to hold any part of Iberia.
On 18 June, the Light Division, having outmarched the French stragglers, emerged into a deeply incised valley – a gorge almost – called San Millan. The terrain nearly formed a ‘Y’, with the British and French on the converging forks. A small river, the Boveda, was bridged just after the valleys’ junction. As the first men at the head of the British column came over a rise and saw San Millan and the Boveda, they realised that several French battalions were standing about near the village without having posted pickets or seeming at all on their mettle. Wellington, wrote one company commander, ‘suddenly appeared amongst us and directed the first and third battalions of the 95th riflemen instantly to make an attack on the French infantry brigade which was in Millan and who, to judge from appearances did