Rifles - Mark Urban [45]
Masséna and a party of his staff officers had already been gazing up at this monstrous position, having gone as far forward as Moura in their reconnaissance. One officer with the Imperial Army noted noted:
Their generals could observe all our movements and even count the number of files. Their reserves were hidden on the other side of the mountain. They could concentrate strong masses in less than half an hour, on any attacked point, while the French needed an hour even to get to their outposts, and during that passage would find themselves exposed to grapeshot and musketry from a multitude of skirmishers hidden among the rocks.
There had been a heated discussion the night before about the wisdom of assaulting the Busaco position under such adverse conditions. Masséna dismissed his chief of staff’s desire to bypass the ridge, telling him, ‘You like manoeuvring, but this is the first time that Wellington seems ready to give battle and I want to profit from the opportunity.’ Masséna, like many of the French officers, considered Wellington’s tactics so far to have been an unseemly combination of timidity – where his own soldiers’ lives were concerned – and ruthlessness, in overseeing the removal of much of the Portuguese rural population, as well as their crops, so that the French would not be able to sustain themselves. If Wellington that day was ready to fight like a man for a change, then Masséna, a tactician considered second only to Napoleon himself in skill and daring, intended to take the bull by the horns.
The noisy arguments between Masséna and his subordinates were quite typical of the French staff’s proceedings in the Peninsula. These fellows like Ney, Reynier and Junot owed their advancement to Napoleon’s personal patronage. Since the Emperor had been absent from Spain for more than a year and a half, they became quite nervous about suffering some disaster that might result in their fall from grace. Although placed under Masséna’s orders, they reserved the right to criticise his decisions while circulating their own version of events through letters to friends in Paris. On the evening of 26 September, however, they were forced into an uncomfortable calculation. Ney and some of the others believed the moment to force the British position had already passed – and there was some justice in this because Wellington had received some late reinforcements – but they had no choice but to fall in with Masséna because the Emperor’s orders were unambiguous on the point of his authority. As far as the marshal was concerned, Busaco would offer his one chance of a knockout blow against the British.
Masséna’s orders involved throwing two corps d’armée into the assault. General Reynier’s would take a small track that led up to the peak of the sierra, with the aim of breaking the British line and forcing them to commit their reserves. Marshal Ney would then send his divisions up the road from Moura to Sula and break through at that vital point. Masséna ordered Ney’s 6th Corps to be ‘preceded by its skirmishers. Arriving on the mountain’s crest it will from in [battle] line.’ A third corps under General Junot would hang back in reserve.
Sub-Lieutenant Marcel of the voltigeur or light-infantry company of the 69ème formed his men up early that morning, ignorant of Masséna’s precise orders, but quite sure that if there was going to be a battle, his skirmishers would be leading the way. Marcel had been conscripted from his native Aube in 1806 and his rise showed how an active and intelligent man could climb in the French system. He was rapidly promoted to corporal and then sergeant, gaining his officer’s commission early in 1810 for his gallantry in the field. For a British soldier, the promotion from recruit to officer in under four years would have been unthinkable. There were other rewards too: a cross of the Légion d’honneur