On 22 July 1812, near Salamanca in Spain, Wellington's Anglo-Portuguese army routed Marshal Auguste Marmont's French Army of Portugal, which had stretched its left wing too far. The French lost at least 14,000 men, and in August Wellington entered Madrid. In 1864 Hood's Confederates attacked Sherman's army east of Atlanta and failed.
Battle of Salamanca
22 July 1812 · 214 years ago
Five days of shadow-boxing
Early in 1812 Wellington's army took the border fortresses of Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajoz. The National Army Museum notes that the 230,000 French troops in Spain were divided among five armies and could expect no reinforcements, because Napoleon was preparing his campaign against Russia. Wellington entered Salamanca on 17 June and tried to draw Marmont into battle.1
For the previous four or five days, Wellington wrote, the armies had made "a march of manoeuvre", and Oman writes that on the morning of 22 July Marmont meant merely to continue the maneuvering of the last five days. Neither commander would fight at a disadvantage. On 21 July Wellington told Lord Bathurst, the Secretary of State, that he was "not to fight an action, unless under very advantageous circumstances, or it should become absolutely necessary". He expected Marmont to be joined by King Joseph's army, which he put at "10,000 or 12,000 men", and he was ready to fall back toward Portugal. At dawn on 22 July, Oman writes, he sent his baggage train off on the road to Ciudad Rodrigo.2
The devil they are
Two rocky knolls, the Lesser and the Greater Arapile, stood on the right of Wellington's line; the allies held the Lesser, and in the morning the French seized the Greater. Marmont saw the dust raised by the baggage train and concluded that Wellington's whole army was withdrawing. A little before two o'clock, Oman writes, he began to push divisions west along a plateau facing the allied heights to catch what he took for a rearguard. Thomières's division marched nearly three miles along it, a gap opened between it and Maucune's division, and the French were soon strung out on a line about six miles long. Oman adds that Marmont watched all this from the Greater Arapile while taking a long-delayed lunch, and sent no counter-orders.3
William Grattan, a subaltern of the 88th (Connaught Rangers) in the 3rd Division, tells how Wellington had sat down to eat "a few mouthfuls of cold beef" when an aide-de-camp reported that the French were extending to their left. "The devil they are!" Wellington said, sprang to his feet, took the telescope, and after watching the enemy closely for a short time exclaimed: "I think this will do at last". Oman also gives the traditional version from Greville's memoirs, in which the words are "By God! that will do!".4
"Drive everything before you"
Wellington rode to the 3rd Division, which was waiting out of sight behind the allied right. Grattan describes him as paler than usual but "quite unruffled in his manner"; tapping Pakenham on the shoulder, he told him to "move on with the 3rd Division", to "take the heights in your front" and to "drive everything before you". "I will, my lord," Pakenham replied.5
With D'Urban's Portuguese cavalry on its flank, the 3rd Division came on the head of Thomières's column. Pakenham, in Wellington's words, "formed the 3rd division across the enemy's flank, and overthrew every thing opposed to him". According to Oman, Thomières was killed and his division lost 2,130 of its little more than 4,500 men.6
Forty thousand in forty minutes
Early in the fighting Marmont was badly wounded. Oman writes that a shell from a British gun on the Lesser Arapile burst beside him as he was about to mount his horse, tearing his right arm and breaking two ribs. Command passed to General Jean Pierre Bonnet, who was soon wounded as well, and then to General Bertrand Clausel.7
Leith's 5th Division climbed the long slope and drove Maucune's men from the crest; Leith himself was wounded. Major General John Gaspard Le Marchant's heavy dragoons then charged the disordered French infantry. Wellington reported that the cavalry "made a most gallant and successful charge against a body of the enemy's infantry, which they overthrew and cut to pieces", and that Le Marchant "was killed at the head of his brigade". Oman writes that the 5th Division swept up some 1,500 prisoners and the eagle of the French 22nd Line. Both the museum and Oman quote the saying that Wellington beat 40,000 men in forty minutes.8
Pack's Portuguese brigade failed to take the Greater Arapile, the 4th Division was driven back with its commander Cole wounded, and Clausel launched a counterattack against the allied center. Wellington brought up Major General Henry Clinton's 6th Division, which restored the line; Marshal Beresford was wounded while turning a brigade against the French flank. "It was dark before this point was carried by the 6th division; and the enemy fled through the woods towards the Tormes," Wellington wrote.9
Wellington aimed the pursuit at Huerta and the fords of the Tormes. According to Oman, he believed that a Spanish garrison still held the castle and bridge of Alba de Tormes. It had been withdrawn, and the French escaped across the river there that night.10
The reckoning
The London Gazette's abstract of allied losses lists 694 killed, 4,270 wounded and 256 missing. Oman gives Wellington's return as 3,129 British and 2,038 Portuguese casualties, with 2 Spaniards killed and 4 wounded, 5,173 in all. He adds that the separate Portuguese return sent by Beresford to Lisbon gives a lower Portuguese loss of 1,637, and that, although it is hard to be sure which is more accurate, the later and more detailed return deserves a first preference.11
French losses were far heavier. Oman puts them at some 14,000 to 15,000 men, the National Army Museum at least 14,000, and both count 20 guns lost. Wellington reported 2 eagles and 6 colors taken, with 1 general, 3 colonels, 3 lieutenant colonels, 130 other officers and "between 6000 and 7000 soldiers" as prisoners. Oman notes that Marmont claimed in his own dispatch to have lost only 6,000 men and 9 guns.12
Among the French generals, Oman lists Thomières and Ferey as killed and Clausel and Bonnet as wounded. On the allied side Le Marchant was killed, and Beresford, Leith, Cole and the cavalry commander Sir Stapleton Cotton were wounded, Cotton by one of his own sentries after dark.13
The road to Madrid
General Maximilien Foy, whose division alone was still intact at the end of the day, wrote in his diary six days after the battle, in Oman's translation: "It raises Lord Wellington almost to the level of Marlborough". The museum and Oman both see Salamanca as the battle that showed Wellington could attack as well as defend.14
Wellington then turned against King Joseph, who withdrew from Madrid, leaving a garrison in the Retiro; on 12 August the allied army entered the capital unopposed. "It is impossible to describe the joy manifested by the inhabitants of Madrid upon our arrival," Wellington reported. According to Oman, the defeat also brought King Joseph's orders for the complete evacuation of Andalusia, which reached Marshal Soult at Seville on 12 August. Wellington's wider career is told in our article on the Duke of Wellington.15
Battle of Annual, 1921: Spain's disaster in the Rif
22 July 1921 · 105 years ago
Near Annual in northeastern Morocco, a Spanish army was overwhelmed by Riffian fighters during the Rif War. The Spanish call it the Disaster of Annual, and the defeat set off a deep political crisis that hurt King Alfonso XIII.
Read the full story of Battle of Annual, 1921: Spain's disaster in the Rif ›Also on this day
1864: East of Atlanta, Georgia, the Confederate army of John Bell Hood attacked part of William T. Sherman's Union forces in the Battle of Atlanta, and the attack failed. Hood abandoned Atlanta on 1 September.16
