Second Battle of Porto
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Battle of Porto | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of the Peninsular War | |||||||
|
|||||||
| Belligerents | |||||||
 First French Empire |
 United Kingdom.svg/22px-Flag_Portugal_(1707).svg.png){kind=small} Portugal |
||||||
| Commanders | |||||||
| Marshal Nicolas Soult | General Lord Wellesley | ||||||
| Strength | |||||||
| 11,200 | 20,000 | ||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||
| 300 killed or wounded, 1,800 captured | 125 | ||||||
|
|||||
In the (Second) Battle of Oporto (or the Battle of the Douro) General Arthur Wellesley's British army took the city of Porto, defeating Marshal Nicolas Soult's French troops on May 12, 1809. After taking command of the British troops in Portugal on April 22, Wellesley (later named 1st Duke of Wellington) immediately advanced on Porto and made a surprise crossing of the Douro River. Soult retreated from the city after losing heavily.
Contents |
[edit] Background
In the First Battle of Porto (March 28, 1809), the French under Soult completely defeated the Portuguese under Generals Lima Barreto and Parreiras outside the city of Oporto (traditionally called Oporto by the British). Soult followed up his success by storming the city and slaughtering the population.
While Soult lay in Oporto, a detached force operated to the east under the leadership of Major-General Louis Loison. At first, this force included Maj-Gen Henri Delaborde's infantry division and Lorge's cavalry division. A Portuguese force under Maj-Gen Francisco Silveira captured the French garrison of Chaves and blocked Soult's communications with Spain by holding the area around Amarante. From April 18 to May 3, the Portuguese held Loison on the west bank of the Tâmega River. On the latter day, French engineers succeeded in disarming the explosives-rigged bridge. Delaborde's infantry then captured the bridge.[1]
By May, the French marshal feared that he was outnumbered by the English. Therefore, Soult stayed up late on May 11 drawing up his plans for retreat. Maj-Gen Julien Mermet's division had already been sent off with the baggage and the artillery park. Soult retained the infantry divisions of Delaborde (3 battalions each of the 17th Light, 70th and 86th Line) and Maj-Gen Pierre Merle (4 bns. each of the 2nd and 4th Light, 3 bns. of the 36th Line), plus Maj-Gen Jean Franceschi's cavalry (1st Hussars, 8th Dragoons, 22nd and Hanoverian Chasseurs), a total of 10,000 infantry and 1,200 cavalry.[2]
After coming up from Lisbon, the British fought a skirmish with the French at the Battle of Grijó on May 11. Arriving at the Douro, Wellesley found he could not cross because Soult had ordered all the boats destroyed or moved to the north bank.
Wellesley's 20,000-man command included seven independent British infantry brigades, under Brig-Gen Henry Campbell (1st Guards), Brig-Gen Alexander Campbell (2nd), Brig-Gen John Sontag (3rd), Maj-Gen Rowland Hill (4th), Brig-Gen Alan Cameron (5th), Brig-Gen Richard Stewart (6th) and Maj-Gen John Murray (7th). Maj-Gen Stapleton Cotton commanded 1,500 horsemen of the 14th, 16th and 20th Light Dragoons, plus the 3rd Light Dragoons King's German Legion (KGL). There were four 6-gun artillery batteries (RA: Sillery, Lawson. KGL: Tieling, Heise) under Colonel Edward Howorth.[3]
Farther to the east, William Carr Beresford (Marshal of the Portuguese army) led Maj-Gen Christopher Tilson's British brigade (1,400) and 5,000 Portuguese to link up with Silveira's force.
[edit] Details of the Battle
On the morning of May 12, Col John Waters was reconnoitering the river east of Porto. He was approached by a Portuguese barber who led him to a point on the bank hidden by brush where there was 'a skiff, a Prior of the covent and three or four peasants'. Partly at Waters' entreaties and partly at the urging of the Prior, the peasants leapt in the skiff with the British officer and crossed the 500-yard wide river, bringing back three unguarded wine barges from the opposite bank.
When informed of this opportunity, Wellesley said casually, "Well, let the men cross."[4] (This was in fact an audacious gamble, reminiscent of his attacks in India.) Immediately, a company of the 3rd Foot (the Buffs) crossed the river and occupied a walled convent overlooking the landing site. By the time the French realized that Wellesley's forces were on the north bank, the entire battalion of the Buffs (Hill's brigade) had been sent into the convent.
Soult, who had slept late, remained blissfully unaware of these developments. Brig-Gen Maximilien Foy, who first saw the British crossing, requisitioned three battalions of the 17th Light Infantry and led an attack on the convent about 11:30 am. Foy was wounded and his soldiers beaten back with heavy losses. Reinforced later in the day by three more battalions, the French attacked again. By this time however, 3 entire battalions were occupying the convent and surrounding buildings. Again, the French were beaten back.
Soult withdrew the troops guarding the Porto boats in order to reinforce Foy. As soon as the French left the riverside, the people of Porto immediately set out in "anything that would float" and ferried more British troops over. Four British battalions crossed immediately and attacked the French from the rear. The French, already planning a leisurely evacuation of the city, instead fled precipitously northeastward.
In order to cut off the French retreat, Murray's 2,900-man brigade with the 14th Light Dragoons had been sent across the Douro at a ferry 5 miles to the east of Porto. Unfortunately, Murray stood aside and failed to block the French escape route, contenting himself with skirmishing. The 14th, however, sped after the retreating French. They gallantly charged and succeeded in cutting off about 300 Frenchmen, securing many of them as prisoners. Out of 110 horsemen, 35 were shot down in this action.
All told, the British only lost 125 men. In the battle for the convent, Wellesley's second-in-command, Maj-Gen Edward Paget had his arm shattered by a French bullet and it had to be amputated. The French suffered 300 killed or wounded and 1,800 captured. Another authority says the French suffered only 600 casualties.[5] Foy was wounded.
[edit] Soult hounded out of Portugal
Because of Murray's blunder and because most of Wellesley's army was still on the south side of the Douro, the French got clean away on May 12. However, Loison failed to clear Silveira's force away from Soult's planned path of retreat to the northeast. So, Soult was compelled to abandon all his equipment and take footpaths over the hills to the north. Soult's and Loison's forces met at Guimarães. But Wellesley's army marched hard in a northerly direction from Porto. They reached Braga (northwest of Guimarães) before the French, forcing Soult to retreat to the northeast again. Meanwhile, Beresford and Silveira were maneuvering to block Soult's escape route in that direction. After escaping from several tight spots, Soult slipped away over the mountains to Orense in Spain. In the epic retreat, Soult's corps lost 4,500 men, its military chest and all its guns and baggage.
[edit] In fiction
The battle of Porto is depicted by Bernard Cornwell in Sharpe's Havoc and by Allan Mallinson in An Act of Courage.
[edit] References
- Glover, Michael. The Peninsular War 1807-1814. London: Penguin, 2001. ISBN 0-141-39041-7
- Hickock, William and York, Edward. York's Military History of the Peninsular War.
- Smith, Digby. The Napoleonic Wars Data Book London: Greenhill, 1998. ISBN 1-85367-276-9
