Battle of Buçaco

Battle of Buçaco

Part of: Defense of Portugal

Buçaco Mountains

date	September 27, 1810
place	Serra do Buçaco - ridge northeast of Coimbra
output	Allied victory

Parties to the conflict
United Kingdom Portugal	France
Commander
Arthur Wellesley	André Masséna Michel Ney
Troop strength
51,345	65,974
losses
1,170 dead, wounded and missing	4,473 dead, wounded and missing

According to Weller

In the Battle of Buçaco (or Bussaco in the old spelling) on ​​September 27, 1810, a British-Portuguese army under Wellington defeated a French army under Marshal André Masséna , which had come to conquer Portugal.

Overview

After Wellington had occupied the Serra do Buçaco (an approx. 15 km long ridge) with 25,000 British troops and the same number of Portuguese troops, it was attacked five times in a row by 65,000 French troops under Marshal André Masséna . Massena was unsure of the positions and strength of the opposing forces, as Wellington had placed them on the far side of the hill, where they could not be easily seen or weakened by artillery. The attacks were carried out by the corps of Marshal Michel Ney and Major General Jean Reynier , but after much hard fighting they failed to drive away the Allied troops and they had to retreat with the loss of 4,500 dead or wounded. The Anglo-Portuguese losses were around 1250 men.

organization

Wellington had six British infantry divisions, the Light Division ( Robert Craufurd ), the 1st Infantry Division ( Brent Spencer ), the 2nd Infantry Division ( Rowland Hill ), the 3rd Infantry Division ( Thomas Picton ), the 4th Infantry Division ( Lowry Cole ) and the 5th Infantry Division ( James Leith ). The latter three divisions each had a Portuguese brigade attached. In addition, there were several purely Portuguese units, a division under John Hamilton and three independent brigades under Denis Pack, Alexander Campbell and John Coleman. George DeGrey, John Slade, George Anson and Henry Fane led four British and five Portuguese cavalry brigades. In the artillery there were six batteries each, six British (Ross RHA, Bull RHA, Thompson, Lawson, two unknown), two King's German Legion (Rettberg, Cleeves) and five Portuguese (Rozierres, Da Cunha Preto, Da Silva, Freira, Sousa) units under Edward Howorth. This was the first major battle of the Iberian War in which units of the re-established Portuguese army fought, which resulted in a great moral strengthening of these inexperienced troops.

Masséna's army consisted of the II. Corps under Reynier, the VI. Corps under Ney, the VIII. Corps under Major General Andoche Junot and a cavalry reserve led by Major General Louis-Pierre Montbrun . The divisions of Pierre Merle and Étienne Heudelet de Bierre completed Reynier's corps. Ney's corps had three divisions under Jean Gabriel Marchand , Julien Mermet and Louis Loison . Junot had the divisions of Bertrand Clausel and Jean-Baptiste Solignac. Every French corps had a light cavalry brigade as standard. Jean Baptiste Eblé , Masséna's artillery commander, had 112 cannons under command.

plans

Wellington posted his army along the ridge of Buçaco, facing east. To improve his lateral communication, his engineers had built a road that ran along the ridge. Cole held the left (northern) flank. This was followed by Craufurd, Spencer, Picton and Leith. Hill held the right (southern) flank, including Hamilton's men.

Masséna, persuaded by Ney and other officers to attack the British position instead of bypassing it, ordered an exploration of the steep slope. He planned to send Reynier to the center of the hill, which he believed was the British right flank. After the attack by II Corps was successful, Masséna wanted to have the British attacked by Ney's corps along the main road. The VIII. Corps stood behind the VI. Corps in reserve. While Ney announced that he was ready to attack, Reynier suddenly had concerns, fearing that his attack would not be successful.

battle

Reynier's troops were stuck in the early morning mist. Heudelet sent his leading light brigade, in formation: a company wide and eight battalions deep, straight up the hill. When the leading regiment reached the crest of the hill, it discovered that it was facing one British and two Portuguese battalions in line with twelve cannons. The French tried to change their formation from column to line. Pelet said: "The column began to march up as if in a maneuver." But the intense musket fire of the Allies soon began to have an effect. The French infantry became confused, but they still clung to an unsteady hold on the ridge.

Figure ( azulejo ) of a battle in the palace of Buçaco

A few hundred yards to the north, Merle's division was pushing up the hill in a similar formation. Picton hastily concentrated his defenders taking advantage of the longitudinal road. Since the French met a concave line of two British and two Portuguese battalions on the ridge, they did not succeed in marching in line. Worn down by converging fire, they fled down the hill. Merle was wounded while his brigade commander, Jean Graindorge, was fatally wounded.

When he saw Heudelet's second brigade standing motionless at the foot of the hill, Reynier rode to Maximilien Foy and demanded an immediate attack. With the Allies out of their positions after the first two attacks were thwarted, Foy encountered a weak point in their defense. With luck, the French met the least prepared unit of the Allies, a Portuguese militia, and were able to drive them out. But the morning mist cleared and it became clear that there was no opponent facing the British right flank. Wellington had already ordered Leith to send his men north to assist Picton. Before Foy's men could make a profit, they were attacked by two battalions of Leith and some of Picton's men. The French were driven off the hill and their brigade commander wounded. When they saw this, Heudelet's other brigade withdrew to the bottom of the hill.

Detailed plan of the positions

Upon hearing the gunfire, Ney assumed Reynier's men were successful and ordered an attack. In this sector the road rose in a long jagged shape, past the villages of Moura and Sula, to reach the crest of the hill at the Convent of Buçaco. Against a very heavy British line of fighters, Loison's division fought its way forward. 1,800 men of the 43rd and 52nd regiments were waiting near the summit . As Loison's lead brigade approached the convent, two British units rose, fired a terrible salvo at close range, and charged with the bayonet. The French brigade broke up and fled, leaving behind their commander Edouard Simon, who was wounded and taken prisoner.

A short time later, and a little further south, Loison's Second Brigade came under close fire from two artillery batteries and Allied rifles. This unit was also expelled. A final attack by Marchand's brigades suffered defeat when they encountered Pack's Portuguese brigade. Both sides spent the remainder of the day in fierce hunting battles, but the French no longer attempted a major attack.

consequences

Engraving of the battle (London 1815)

Masséna moved his troops to the right to circumvent this position, and Wellington continued to retreat behind the previously fortified lines of Torres Vedras . He achieved this in October 1810. After Masséna realized that they were too strong to attack, he retired to winter quarters. Lacking food for his men and tormented by British hit-and-run tactics , he lost another 25,000 men captured or died of starvation and disease before retreating to Spain early in 1811. This freed Portugal from the French occupation, with the exception of the border fortress of Almeida . During the retreat, the battle of Sobral de Monte Agraço (October 13-14, 1810) took place.

swell

• René Chartrand: Bussaco, 1810 (= Osprey Military Campaign Series. Vol. 97). Osprey Military, Oxford 2001, ISBN 1-84176-310-1 .
• Michael Glover: Wellington's Peninsular Victories. Busaco, Salamanca, Vitoria, Nivelle. Pan Books, London 1971, ISBN 0-330-02789-1 .
• Jean Jacques Pelet : The French Campaign in Portugal, 1810-1811. To account. Edited, annotated and translated by Donald D. Horward. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis MN 1973.
• Dick Zimmermann: The Battle of Bussaco. In: Wargamer's Digest. December 1978.

literature

• Jac Weller: Wellington in the Peninsula. 1808-1814. Nicholas Vane, London 1962 (reprinted. Kaye, Ward, London, 1969).

Web links

• Battle of Bussaco

Coordinates: 40 ° 20 ′ 40 ″  N , 8 ° 20 ′ 15 ″  W.