Battle of Bussaco

Background

Napoleon ordered Marshal André Masséna to drive the British out of Portugal in 1810. His Army of Portugal took Ciudad Rodrigo on 9 July, mauled Craufurd's Light Division on the Côa, and on 26 August the magazine of Almeida blew up and the fortress surrendered. The road to Lisbon was open, but Masséna waited three weeks. Wellington had stripped the country in front of him of people and food, the Ordenança were shooting his foragers, and he was so short of draught animals that he cut each division's artillery from twelve guns to eight.

Wellington's plan was to fall back on the Lines of Torres Vedras, still being built north of Lisbon, and to delay the French on the way. When Masséna advanced on 15 September, he chose the north bank of the Mondego through Viseu, by what Wellington called the worst road in the whole kingdom, apparently trusting maps that showed roads which did not exist. Hill's corps and Leith's division marched north to join the main army, and on 21 September Wellington chose his ground: the Serra do Buçaco, a bare ridge of heather and granite nine miles long and about 1,200 feet high, lying right across the Coimbra road.

Reynier's II Corps reached the foot of the ridge on 25 September, with Ney's VI Corps at dusk. Ney took what he could see for a rearguard. Masséna, who had never fought the British, came up only at about 2 pm on the 26th, rejected advice to march round towards Oporto, and ordered a frontal attack for the next morning.

The armies

Wellington had 52,272 men on the ridge: 26,843 British and King's German Legion (KGL) and 25,429 Portuguese, with 60 guns but almost no cavalry. There were six British infantry divisions: Spencer's 1st, Hill's 2nd, Picton's 3rd, Cole's 4th, Leith's newly formed 5th and Craufurd's Light. Most had a Portuguese brigade attached, and there were also Hamilton's Portuguese division and the independent Portuguese brigades of Pack, Alexander Campbell and Coleman. The Portuguese army had been rebuilt under Marshal Beresford with British officers, and this was its first big battle; its light infantry were the green-coated Caçadores. Wellington had cut a road along the reverse slope, so troops could shift along the ridge unseen, and kept his men back from the crest, without fires.

Masséna had about 62,500 effectives and over 110 guns. Reynier's II Corps had the divisions of Merle and Heudelet; Ney's VI Corps those of Marchand, Mermet and Loison; Junot's VIII Corps those of Clauzel and Solignac; and Montbrun commanded the reserve cavalry. Masséna's orders were for attacks in columns at least a division strong, behind swarms of tirailleurs, 13,000 or 14,000 men at each of two points. His guns could sweep the lower slopes but not the crest.

The battle

Dawn, 27 September: Merle's attack. Reynier went first, at the lowest point of the ridge, where the country road from San Antonio de Cantaro crosses it. Merle's division, 11 battalions and about 6,500 men, climbed in fog some three-quarters of a mile north of the road. Its columns, one company wide, drifted left through thick heather towards an empty stretch of crest between the 45th and the 88th Connaught Rangers. Picton, hearing the firing, sent a wing of the 45th and the Portuguese 8th Line to fill it. The leading regiment, the 36th Line, was coming over the skyline, exhausted, as they arrived. Colonel Alexander Wallace of the 88th charged at once into its flank with the 45th's wing beside him, while the 8th Portuguese fired into its front and Wellington brought up two of Thompson's guns. The 36th was rolled down onto the 2nd and 4th Léger, and the whole division fled downhill. Merle was wounded and his brigadier Graindorge fell.

Heudelet on the road. At the same time the 31st Léger, four battalions, pushed up the road itself. As the mist lifted, Arentschildt's Portuguese battery, the 74th and the Portuguese 21st shot it to a standstill.

Foy's attack. Perhaps half an hour to an hour later, Reynier rode up and angrily ordered Foy's brigade, seven battalions, up the hillside just north of the pass. Foy reached the crest, broke the Thomar militia and drove back the Portuguese 8th and 9th. But Wellington had told Leith to close in if nothing faced him, and the 5th Division had marched north along the reverse-slope road. Leith led the 9th Foot across the plateau into Foy's flank, volleying from 100 yards, and the French ran. Foy was wounded. Reynier had only the 47th Line left unbeaten; his corps had lost over 2,000 men.

Ney: Loison at Sula. Ney had been told to attack only when Reynier held the crest, and moved as the mist showed Merle's column on the plateau. North of the deep ravine below the convent, Loison's brigades under Simon and Ferey fought their way through a screen of the 95th Rifles and Caçadores, took the village of Sula, and climbed the last steep slope under the fire of Ross's guns. Lying unseen in a sunken road behind the crest were the 43rd and 52nd, about 1,800 bayonets. Craufurd waved his hat and, it is said, called on the 52nd to revenge Sir John Moore. Their volley at ten paces, then companies wheeling onto both flanks, sent Loison headlong down the hill; Simon was wounded and captured. Loison lost about 1,250 men, the two British battalions 23. One stray battalion of Ferey's at the head of the ravine was charged back by the 1/19th Portuguese of Coleman's brigade.

Marchand on the chaussée. South of the ravine, Maucune's brigade came up the main road under the fire of three batteries, swerved into a pine wood to clear Pack's 4th Caçadores, and then fought a musketry duel with Pack's Portuguese line below the convent wall. It lost Maucune and some 850 men; Marcognet's brigade behind it lost 300 to the guns.

Afternoon. Ney recalled his columns. Mermet's division and Junot's whole corps had hardly lost a man, but Masséna would waste no more lives, and called off the attack around 2 pm. Skirmishing in front of Sula and the 1st Division died away during the afternoon.

Aftermath

The French return gives 4,498 casualties, among them General Graindorge killed and Generals Merle, Foy, Maucune and Simon wounded; it is incomplete. Oman notes that no Peninsular battle cost the French so high a proportion of officers. Wellington lost 1,252, exactly 626 British and 626 Portuguese. The Portuguese had done their share of the fighting and won high praise, and Wellington now knew how far he could trust them.

The victory did not hold the ridge. On the 28th French cavalry found the road through Boialvo, around the north end of the Serra, which Trant's Portuguese militia had been ordered to block but had not reached. That evening Wellington ordered a retreat, and critics have blamed him ever since for neither holding that road nor attacking the troops left in front of him. The French abandoned some 400 badly wounded men in their camp. The allies marched through Coimbra and were inside the Lines of Torres Vedras by 10 October. Masséna found the Lines too strong to attack, starved in front of them through the winter, and retreated into Spain in spring 1811, having lost some 25,000 men.

Bussaco is remembered as the Portuguese army's coming of age and as a classic reverse-slope defence; it became a clasp of the Military General Service Medal. Napoleon remarked that Reynier, beaten by the British before, had learned nothing. The fiercest argument was British: Picton and Leith each played down the other's part in beating Reynier, and Oman sides with Leith.

Wargaming it

Bussaco is two separate battles on one nine-mile ridge, divided by a ravine no troops could cross. That suits either a grand-tactical game of the whole field with brigades as units, or two linked battalion-scale scenarios: Reynier against Picton and Leith at San Antonio de Cantaro, and Ney against Craufurd and Pack at Sula and the convent road.

The interest lies in information. The allied player should deploy hidden on the reverse slope, with a free lateral road behind the crest; the French player sees only pickets and a few guns. Morning fog, heather that slows and disorders columns, and artillery that cannot reach the crest all make the climb the real enemy. The French need a reason to attack at all: give them Masséna's low opinion of the British and victory conditions that reward a quick breakthrough.

The Portuguese are the wild card. Rate them untested, with some units, like the Thomar militia, liable to bolt and others, like Pack's brigade and the 19th, proving as steady as the British. The decisions are timing and reserves: Ney must wait for Reynier, Reynier kept no flank guard against Leith, and Masséna never used Junot's 13,000 or Mermet. What-ifs include a co-ordinated attack by both corps, Junot committed at Sula, a flank guard for Foy, or Masséna turning the ridge on the 26th without a battle.

Maps and pictures

Paintings and prints

Paintings and prints of the battle, from the time and the century after, by year: free-to-use pictures from the battle's category on Wikimedia Commons. Each opens its file page there, with the full caption and source.