Battle of Fuentes de Oñoro

Background

In March 1811 Masséna's starving Army of Portugal fell back from the Lines of Torres Vedras into Spain, leaving a French garrison of some 1,300 men under General Brennier in the Portuguese border fortress of Almeida. Wellington followed and blockaded it, while sending Beresford south to besiege Badajoz; that operation would end at Albuera a fortnight later. Wellington had no siege train and meant to starve it out, and Masséna considered himself bound in honour to relieve it.

His army had come back in a terrible state. Its cavalry was weak and twelve of its seventeen batteries had no horses. Masséna begged Marshal Bessières, commanding the Army of the North, for men, guns and teams. Bessières came in person on 1 May, but brought only about 1,700 horsemen, a Guard horse battery and thirty teams of gun horses. Napoleon later rebuked him for not bringing 10,000 men. Oman thinks that with 55,000 men the two marshals would have seen Wellington give up the blockade without a fight.

As it was, Masséna gathered about 48,000 men and 38 guns at Ciudad Rodrigo and crossed the Agueda on 2 May with a convoy for Almeida. Wellington had decided to fight. He chose the line of the Dos Casas brook, whose ravine is 150 feet deep near the ruined Fort Concepción and fades out by the village of Fuentes de Oñoro, five miles upstream. South of the village the ground opened into rolling plateau as far as Poço Velho (Pozo Bello) and the boggy ground under the hill of Nave de Haver. Behind the whole position lay the ravine of the Coa, crossed near at hand only by the narrow bridge of Castelo Bom.

The armies

Masséna's four corps were Reynier's 2nd, Loison's 6th, one division of Junot's 8th under Solignac, and Drouet's 9th, about 42,000 infantry. Montbrun commanded the cavalry, about 4,500 sabres with Bessières's brigades, Lepic's Guard cavalry among them. The army had just survived a winter of hunger in Portugal; Fortescue sees a lack of the usual French dash in the battle, and notes that French officer losses were nearly three times the British.

Wellington had about 37,500 men: 34,000 infantry, 23,000 of them British, but only 1,850 cavalry against Masséna's 4,500, and the British horses, Wellington wrote, 'had not a gallop in them'. In guns he had a rare superiority, 48 to 38. His Portuguese battalions were badly under strength because their government fed them so poorly. His divisions ranged from Craufurd's veteran Light Division and Picton's 3rd to Houston's new 7th, which had only two British battalions, both just landed, with the Chasseurs Britanniques, the Brunswick Oels and two Portuguese regiments. On the open plateau his weakness in cavalry was the danger; in the village of Fuentes, with its stone walls, crofts and houses climbing to a church and a rocky knoll, his infantry had a fortress.

The battle

3 May: the first assault on the village. The Light Division and cavalry fell back skirmishing onto the main position. Wellington put the 5th and 6th Divisions behind the deep ravine in the north, facing Reynier, and the 1st, 3rd and 7th Divisions and Ashworth's Portuguese on the heights behind Fuentes. The village itself was held by 28 light companies, about 1,800 picked shots under Lieutenant-Colonel Williams of the 5/60th, with the 2/83rd in support. In the afternoon Masséna sent Ferey's ten battalions straight at it. They forded the brook, were thrown out, came again and drove the light companies up to the church and the rocks. Late in the day Cadogan led the 71st, with the 79th and 2/24th, down through the lanes and threw Ferey back over the brook; four of Marchand's battalions could only retake the chapel on the far bank. The French lost 652, the Allies 259.

4 May: the search for a flank. Beyond skirmishing across the brook, the day was quiet. Montbrun reported that south of Fuentes there was only a cavalry screen, a battalion in Poço Velho and Julián Sánchez's guerrillas at Nave de Haver. Masséna planned to turn Wellington's right with Marchand's and Mermet's divisions, Solignac in support and almost all his cavalry, while Drouet and Ferey stormed the village. Wellington suspected a move to the south and sent the 7th Division two miles out to Poço Velho.

Dawn, 5 May: Poço Velho. At first light Montbrun's dragoons scattered the guerrillas at Nave de Haver and drove in the British squadrons. Marchand's infantry stormed Poço Velho and its wood, and French light cavalry rode over the 85th and 2nd Caçadores as they came out of the houses; they lost about 150 men, and a charge by German hussars saved them. Wellington, surprised by the size of the turning force, re-formed his line at right angles: the 1st and 3rd Divisions and Ashworth's brigade faced south along the high ground from Fuentes to the Turón brook.

Morning: the Light Division's retreat. Craufurd took the Light Division out to bring Houston in. The Chasseurs Britanniques, behind a stone wall, broke a dragoon charge with one volley, and the 7th Division slipped back across the Turón to Freneda. Then the Light Division marched about a mile back across open ground in battalion squares, with the cavalry and Bull's troop of horse artillery in the intervals, followed by some 3,000 horsemen and a battery. It lost only 67 men. Near the end Captain Norman Ramsay, with two of Bull's guns, was cut off by chasseurs and broke out at the gallop, helped by squadrons of the 14th Light Dragoons and the Royals. A French charge caught the Guards' pickets extended and cost them about 100 men. Montbrun wanted the Guard cavalry to lead a general charge, but Lepic would not move without orders from Bessières.

Mid-morning to 2 pm: the village. Ferey cleared the lower village, taking two companies of the 79th, before the 71st, 79th and 24th drove him back. Drouet then put in the grenadier companies of his corps in three élite battalions, whose bearskins made the defenders think them the Imperial Guard. They gained the middle slopes. Wellington fed in light companies and the 6th Caçadores. About noon eight or ten fresh battalions of Conroux's and Claparède's divisions took the church and the rocks. Then Mackinnon's 74th and 88th charged down the street; the 88th met the 9th Léger head-on by the church, and the French were swept back to the brook. By about 2 pm the attack was over. Masséna never sent Marchand, Mermet and Solignac against the new line; his 24 guns were overpowered by Wellington's 36, and he later pleaded a shortage of ammunition.

Aftermath

The fighting of the 5th cost the Allies about 1,500 men and the French about 2,200; over both days the French lost about 2,850 and the Allies about 1,800. In Fuentes village alone, Oman reckons, some 4,000 defenders lost about 800 and 7,000 attackers about 1,300.

On the night of the 5th and the next day Wellington entrenched his new front, a rare use of field works on such a scale for him. Masséna gave up the relief, fed his army on the Almeida convoy, and smuggled a message into the fortress; two of his three volunteer messengers were caught and shot. The French recrossed the Azava from 8 May. On the night of 10–11 May Brennier blew up Almeida's defences and broke out to the north. Through the slackness of Erskine and others the column reached the bridge of Barba del Puerco, losing about 360 of its 1,300 men. Wellington called it the most disgraceful military event of the war so far. On 10 May General Foy had brought Napoleon's order replacing Masséna with Marmont.

The battle is remembered as a near thing. Wellington wrote to his brother William that if 'Boney' had been there 'we should have been beat' (Fortescue gives 'beaten'). Napier blamed him for sending the 7th Division out to Poço Velho on open cavalry country; Oman defends the move as a flank guard meant to retire. Both sides argued over Montbrun's hesitation and Lepic's refusal to charge.

Wargaming it

Fuentes de Oñoro is three games in one. The village fight of 3 and 5 May is a superb small-unit scenario: a few hundred yards of walled crofts, lanes and houses climbing from a fordable brook to the church and the rocks, with each side feeding in battalions. It suits skirmish or battalion-level rules with turns of ten or fifteen minutes and rules for fighting in built-up areas.

The flank action of 5 May is the opposite: an open, rolling plateau with woods around Poço Velho and boggy ground by Nave de Haver, and a French cavalry superiority of about three to one. The British player must extract the 7th Division and then the Light Division across a mile or more of open ground without being caught out of square. A brigade-level game at twenty-minute turns, over roughly four miles of front, can join the two.

The decisions are rich. Does Wellington push the 7th Division out at all? Does Masséna press Marchand and Mermet hard behind Montbrun, as Napier argued, or attack the new front before Fuentes falls? Does Lepic charge when Montbrun asks? The biggest what-if is Bessières bringing his Guard infantry, which Oman thinks would have stopped Wellington fighting. Reynier's demonstration against the north, held by two divisions behind a deep ravine, tests whether a player can resist wasting troops.

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.