Redcoats Against Napoleon by Carole Divall

Author:Carole Divall
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Bisac Code 1: HIS037060
ISBN: eBook ISBN: 9781844685622
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Published: 2009-04-19T00:00:00+00:00

Villamuriel and the surrounding area

A more judicious view acknowledges that Wellington’s problems started at Palencia. The attempt to hold the bridge failed as General Foy stormed into the town. ‘The order had been sent to our Division to blow up the bridge on the evening of the 24th, instead of halting on the heights. But unfortunately the Dragoon who carried the order lost his way in the dark and did not reach the Division until 8 o’clock in the morning, by which time the bridge ought to have been destroyed. This accident was the sole cause of the disasters of the day. As soon as the order arrived, the Artificers and Miners of the Division were ordered down, covered by our battalion and two squadrons of dragoons. But having, I dare say, 4 miles to march, the morning was pretty far advanced ere we arrived there, and to work they went on the bridge … By this time the enemy were moving down the hills which overlooked the town, keeping up a desultory fire, which was taken for the stragglers shooting pigs; when all in a hurry our leather merchants [shoemakers had been sent into the town to procure leather] came running down the lines and spread the alarm of the enemy being in the town. Scarcely had they reached the column when some close firing took place on the bridge, and the enemy got possession of it.’112 There is a certain disingenuousness in Douglas’s account. The Royals seem to have been particularly casual in their conduct of the business, although they were not helped by the failure of a fuse when the engineers tried to blow the bridge. Nor did the Galicians offer much of a fight. As Wellington wrote in his dispatch, they were ‘not in a state of discipline which could gain them either the confidence of their allies or of themselves.’

This failure in Palencia left the fifth division in a perilously exposed position. Not only was Foy firmly in control of the town, only four miles upstream, but General Maucune was advancing to take the bridges at Villamuriel and San Isidro. In this dangerous situation, the division fought a successful rearguard action which enabled the rest of the allied forces to get off safely, although at considerable loss to themselves.

The principal evidence for what happened comes in the dispatches of Wellington himself, and of General Oswald, who was handicapped by the division neither knowing nor trusting him. Unfortunately, there is little private evidence to flesh out these official accounts, and some assumptions have to be made, all of which contradict Napier’s version.113 Douglas echoes several of Napier’s criticisms (possibly influenced by the publication of Napier’s History), although the Royals, after they had extricated themselves from Palencia by clambering up the higher ground, played only a belated part in the action.

Villamuriel, a small village at the time, lies halfway on a straight line between Palencia and Duenas, with the river Carrion on one side and the Canal de Castilla running parallel on the other.

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