Phew. I had to cut so much out of this, a super interesting chunk of campaigning!

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War Room 29: Second Oporto

Welcome back to the War Room where we are going back to 1809 to find out what happens to the Second French Invasion of Portugal, now that Marshal Soult and his 2nd Corps have taken the city of Oporto in the north. We left Soult in the last episode in the middle of a delicate balancing act. He still had over 20,000 men at his disposal, but he simultaneously had to hold Oporto and the surrounding area against roving Portuguese partisans, militia and Ordenanza units; screen the roads to the south to secure himself against any advance by the British; send out detachments to regain contact with the now isolated and surrounded garrisons he had left along his invasion route and probe eastwards in the hope of making contact with another French force under Lapisse that was supposed to be coordinating with him.

Lapisse was not only not coming to help, but a Portuguese force under General Silviera that Soult had brushed aside in his advance had re-coalesced behind him and taken the town of Amarante, fixing 10,000 French troops under Loisson there while they tried to take a bridge over the Tamega and open the route east.

They finally prevailed on the 2nd of May, by which time British and Portuguese troops had already moved up from Lisbon and were starting to concentrate at Coimbra, about 100km to the south.

Wellesley Returns to Portugal

This was a break in their behaviour up until this point. While Soult was invading from the north, the British army in Portugal had spent it’s time concentrated around Lisbon. They were led by General Craddock, who refused to entertain the idea that the country was in any way defensible and kept close to capital so he could use the port facilities there to stage a quick naval getaway.

This all changed on the 22nd of April, when Sir Arthur Wellesley arrived and took command. Wellesley had already made something of a name for himself in Portugal, leading the original contingent of British troops sent to drive out the first French invasion under Marshal Junot in summer 1808. After pretty comprehensively defeating the French at Vimeiro, he was superseded in command and forced to take a back seat while his two new superiors- Sir Harry Burrard and Sir Hew Dalrymple- failed to follow up his success and instead negotiated a French evacuation, giving them very favourable terms.

This caused no small amount of outrage back in Britain and all three generals were recalled to face a court of inquiry. This ultimately found nobody guilty, though Dalrymple and Burrard were quietly sidelined and Wellesley returned to active service.

There was no guarantee that that meant he would return to Portugal though. In fact, there was no guarantee that British involvement would continue.

The situation at the end of January 1809 was grim. Sir John Moore might have diverted two French Corps into Galicia, but his army had ultimately been forced to evacuate and been reduced to a terrible state during the Retreat to Corunna. There were another five French corps in Spain, apparently driving the Spanish armies before them at every turn. Portugal’s regular army had essentially evaporated, the only meaningful conventional force in the country was made up of the small British detachments Moore had not taken with him.

The grand strategic opportunity to draw in, fix and hopefully grind down large numbers of French troops on the peninsula remained though and the British decided to risk a second expedition to Portugal under the command of the only person with any optimism about defending the country: Sir Arthur Wellesley.

Wellesley was adamant that he could defend Portugal, provided that the French invaded with fewer than 100,000 men and that he could command 30,000 British troops aided by a reconstructed the Portuguese army.

For the first condition, he thought that the French would need to deploy so much manpower securing their lines of communication through Spain that they would struggle to muster a force large enough to conquer Portugal. If anything, he thought they would underestimate the difficulty and he would be able to worsen the overall French position on the peninsula by defeating smaller invasion forces.

As for the second, while it was possible to scrape together another 30,000 British troops, the key element was the effort to reconstitute the Portuguese army. This would not only reinforce the British army but provide troops to occupy static positions and take on secondary roles that would free up the field army to manoeuvre as necessary.

This effort was already well in hand by the time Wellesley took command in Lisbon in April. It was at least in part a Portuguese initiative: they had originally wanted Wellesley to come and take command of their army, whip it into shape and lead it to victory. Wellesley declined, and the British send General Beresford out instead who took up the position of Portuguese commander-in-chief and became a Field Marshal.

Beresford rapidly developed a grip on the Portuguese. He brought in British officers to command, lead and instruct Portuguese units. Combined with an increased supply of arms, the Portuguese regulars around Lisbon were in a much improved state by the time Wellesley arrived.

He wasn’t tremendously impressed- and probably retained some doubts after having dealt with Portuguese forces the previous year- but he nevertheless resolved to make use of them. The best battalions were incorporated into British brigades so they would be fighting alongside more reliable troops, while Beresford took field command of the remainder.

Wellesley’s Plan

Along with more British units arriving in Lisbon, this left Wellesley with 25,000 British troops and 16,000 untested Portuguese regulars at his disposal.

Soult was still up at Oporto with 10,000 men, with another 10,000 men over at Amarante under Loisson and a screening force south of the Duoro made up of Mermet’s infantry division, nad Franceschi’s Dragoons, who had pushed as far south as the river Vouga.

This wasn’t the only French force menacing Portugal though. The French 1st Corps under Victor had recently defeated Cuesta’s Spanish army at the Battle of Medellin and sat near the Spanish-Portuguese frontier to the south, a position from which he could lead his 20,000 men past the fortresses of Badajoz and Elvas to strike at Lisbon from the east.

It had in fact been Napoleon’s plan for Soult and Victor to coordinate and at least support each other as the 2nd Corps marched south from Oporto, but the conditions of warfare on the peninsula prohibited such an approach and they were thoroughly out of contact.

Wellesley resolved to strike at Soult first. With some luck, he would be able to dash north and hit the 2nd Corps before it could concentrate, defeating it in detail and liberating northern Portugal before having to deal with any threat from Victor in the south.

That was still a real threat though, so Wellesley detached 12,000 men under General Mackensie and ordered him to Abrantes where he was to hold the line of the River Tagus. Mackensie force was to small to do anything but act as a speedbump to the French 1st Corps, but he was also a good 150km inside Portugal and on the far bank of the river Tagus. Wellesely judged that the amount of time it would take for Victor to push past two border fortresses, penetrate that far into the country and then conduct an opposed crossing of a significant river in spate would easily be long enough for him to return from the north.

This did, however, take 12,000 men from Wellesley’s attack on Soult. He concentrated his remaining force at Coimbra and then split off Beresford with 5800 men. These were to move inland to Amarante and join with General Silviera to block the French line of retreat towards central Spain.

That left Wellesley himself with 18,000 men- 7 infantry brigades, 1 cavalry brigade and 36 guns- with which he planned to descend on Oporto.

Beresford left Coimbra on the 6th of May, Wellesley left on the 7th and headed north. Unfortunately for him, he had by now lost the element of surprise.

The Argenton Conspiracy

This was a direct result of the so-called Argenton Conspiracy. Without going into too much detail about this, it was essentially a ridiculously optimistic plot by anti-Bonaparte French officers to seize control of the 2nd Corps. It was led by one Captain Argenton, who had passed through the lines several times to try and enlist Wellesley’s support.

He not only failed to do this- Wellesley was incredibly sceptical- but after visiting the general at Coimbra he was arrested by the French. Just as the British were leaving on the 7th, Argenton was bragging to Soult about the British army on its way to destroy him.

Soult was thus forewarned. In Oman’s words:

“… he began to make instant preparations for retreat: orders were sent to Franceschi to fall back on Oporto and not to risk anything by an attempt to hold off Wellesley longer than was prudent. Loison was informed that he must clear the road beyond Amarante, as the army was about to retire by the Tras-os-Montes, and he would now form its advanced guard. Lorges at Braga was directed to gather in the small fractions of Huedelet’s division which had been left at Viana and other places in the north, and to march in their company upon Amarante… The Marshal saw, with some dismay, that these isolated detachments would not be able to join the main body till the fourteenth or fifteenth of May; it was necessary to hold Oporto as long as possible in order to give them time to come up.”

Soult has already made up his mind that he can’t stay in Portugal. It’s been hard enough getting to Oporto and staying there, he’s totally isolated from other French forces, wherever his forces go they’re surrounded by Portuguese partisans. Now he has a superior British force heading his way. Even if he manages to concentrate his entire Corps and pull off a victory against Wellesley, he’d be in pretty much the same situation as before, minus all his losses from the battle. His orders from the Emperor are clearly impractical and out of date, so it makes sense for him cut his losses and retreat into Spain.

Driving in Soult’s Screen

The forewarning probably went a long way towards saving the French screening force from a serious defeat. Francheschi was holding the line of the river Vouga with Mermet’s infantry behind him at Grijon.

Wellesley had detached two infantry brigades, ordering them to follow the coast, cross the Vouga estuary in small boats and then march to Ovar. There, they would be in position to cut Franceschi’s line of retreat while the rest of the force surprised the French with a rapid night march.

Neither of these efforts panned out. Night movements are always dogged by friction and delay. This one was no different and Franceschi was able to fall back on Mermet. The flanking effort was also delayed by the river crossing and didn’t have enough strength in position to make the interception.

On the next day, the 11th, Wellesley’s forces recombined and advanced on the French at Grijon. Mermet held his ground until Wellesley threw out flanking forces, then withdrew to the north having delayed the British without getting into a major engagement. The French fell back to Oporto, crossing the Douro to consolidate with Soult on the north bank and breaking the bridge behind them.

The 2nd Battle of Oporto

Soult was also prepared to delay Wellesley. He had 13,000 men on hand in and around the city, behind the formidable obstacle of the Duoro. With the pontoon bridge broken again and all the small boats and barges on the river either sunk or tied up on the north bank, Soult and his staff were confident they had nothing to fear for at least few days.

Their main concern was that Wellesley would try and repeat the trick he had tried on the Vouga, bringing fishing vessels up and effecting a crossing downstream of Oporto. So the French paid considerably more attention to the west, to the stretch of the Duoro between Oporto and the sea, than they did to the east. Soult himself had set up his headquarters in a villa to the west of the city. From there, he could keep an eye on the downstream reaches of the river while he organised his retreat.

“So thoroughly [relates Oman] were both Soult and his staff impressed with the idea that Wellesley would operate below, and not above, the city, that while the lower reaches of the Douro were watched with the greatest care, a very inefficient look-out was kept on the banks above Oporto: there would seem to have been but a single battalion placed in that direction, and this was lying far back from the river, with no proper system of pickets thrown forward to the water’s edge.

Yet the opposite bank was full of cover, of thickets, gardens and olive groves, screening several lanes and by-paths that had led down to ferries. Such of the boats as had not been scuttled had been brought over to the north bank, but they were not all protected by proper guards.”

The British approached Oporto on the morning of May the 12th, arriving at the transpontine suburb of Villa Nova on the south bank. Wellesley left his army on the reverse slope behind the suburb- where the French couldn’t see it- and took up a position in a monastery called the Serra Convento.

This convent and the surrounding gardens gave Wellesley a dominant view over Oporto, but he was also accompanied by Portuguese advisors who knew the area, including some Oporto residents who had snuck across the river the day before with information about the French dispositions.

So Wellesley is able to quickly get a good handle on the situation. He can see French pickets downstream and in the city itself, he can even see a force of infantry, artillery and wagons assemble on the north-eastern edge of Oporto and march off. This is Mermet’s division of infantry escorting 2nd Corp’s reserve artillery and sick off towards Amarante.

Meanwhile, British intelligence officers have been scouring the south bank all morning and from them, Wellesley gets two critical pieces of good news.

The first is that there is a working ferry about six kilometres upstream at Barca D’Avintas. This had been scuttled by the French, but they hadn’t left a guard on it and the local Portuguese had refloated it and patched it up.

The second bit of news is that there’s also a much closer crossing point available. On that morning, a Portuguese barber from the city evaded French patrols, crossed the river and told one of the British officers about four unguarded wine barges tied up on the north bank. With help from the locals, these have been brought across. Even better, the barges are underneath a Seminary on the far bank. This is a great big, sturdy building on a hill next to the riverbank, it’s surrounded by a high wall, there’s a wide stretch of open ground between it and the city proper and- almost unbelievably- it appears to be unoccupied.

So thanks to French inattentiveness, Wellesley not only has two crossing points over the River Duoro, but they are on the eastern side of Oporto between Soult and the rest of his corps at Amarante.

He orders General Murray to take a brigade-sized element round to Barca D’Avintas, cross the river and “Seize a position on the opposite bank capable of being defended against superior numbers.”

But his main aim is to take and hold the seminary. On top of being a solid defensive position in and of itself, all that open ground between the seminary and the city is totally dominated by the Serra Convento, as are all the places the French could set up their artillery to engage the crossing point.

So while the first British troops clamber into the wine barges and start to make their way across the river to climb up to the Seminary, Wellesley brings his own artillery up and conceals their guns in and around the convent.

The barges take 15 minutes to cross and between them they can carry about 100 men. The first boatload makes it without any problems, finds that the seminary is indeed free of the French and immediately starts the process of fortifying it.

The French first got wind of what was going on at about 1030, a whole hour after the first crossing. The seminary was in General Foy’s area of responsibility and upon hearing that troops in red coats had been sighted on the river, he immediately sent a runner off to Soult.

That marshal was actually still in bed at this point, having worked late the previous night hammering out the details of his withdrawal. Oman gives us a good picture of the chaos that resulted:

“The staff were taking their coffee, after a late breakfast, when the hoof-beats of a furious rider startled them, and a moment later Brossard, the aide-de-camp of General Foy, burst into the villa shouting that the English had got into the town.”

“Led to the Marshal’s bedside, he hurriedly explained that Foy had just discovered the enemy passing by boats into the Seminary, and was massing his brigade for an attack upon them. The marshal started up, sent his staff flying in all directions to warn the outlying troops, ordered all the remaining impedimentia to be sent off on the Vallongo road, and dispatched Brossard back to Foy to tell him to ‘push the English into the river.’

“He was hardly dressed and on horseback, when the noise of a distant fusillade, followed by heavy artillery fire, gave the news that attack on the Seminary had already begun.”

This first attack went in at 1130, it having taken Foy an hour to assemble his men. The lead regiment came up in the usual fashion: a series of columns preceded by swarms of skirmishers and supported by French batteries that came up and started to deploy near the south bank where they could cover the river and target the wine barges still ferrying British troops across.

Seeing this, Wellesley ordered his own artillery concealed in the Serra Convento to open fire. The French artillery were rapidly driven off by the concentration of guns, then the British turned their attention to the infantry columns with devastating effect, not least because the British gunners were using new shrapnel shot. Between the artillery fire and musketry from the seminary, the first French attack collapsed.

By the time the French could organise a stronger second attack under Delaborde, the entirety of Hill’s brigade had occupied the Seminary. Quoting Oman again:

“This new force [of French] executed a far more sustained and desperate attack on the Seminary than had their predecessors… But it had no better fortune than the last. A thousand British infantry, comfortably ensconced behind stone walls, and protected on their flanks by the storm of shot and shell from the opposite bank of the river could not easily be moved. So well, indeed, were they covered, that in three hours’ fighting they only lost 77 men, while the open ground outside was thickly strewn with the dead and wounded Frenchmen.”

Soult now has a real crisis on his hands. The British are well established on the north bank in a position within striking distance of his line of retreat. He has to do something, what he decides to do is bring up Reynaud’s brigade from its position in the city guarding the broken bridge and the quays and throw them at the Seminary in one final attack before giving up and retreating. This is the decision that puts the final nail in the coffin for the 2nd Corps.

As soon as the French are gone, hundreds of Portuguese civilians swarm down to riverside, man all the boats they can find and take them over to the south bank. Here, Campbell and Stuart’s brigades emerge from hiding in Villa Nova and the Portuguese start ferrying them across.

Half an hour later, the first British troops have rushed through the city and attack into the flank of the French as they’re assembling to attack the Seminary. Soult realises how bad things are, cancels the attack and immediately orders the entire corps to withdraw along the Vallongo road.

So the French retreat in some disorder, pursued by the British troops coming out of Oporto and the Seminary. Its absolute chaos, the French are hopelessly disorganised; the officers are trying to scrape together some kind of coherent rearguard.

Into this situation comes General Murray. It’s taken him longer than anticipated to get across the river at Barca d’Avintas, but now he’s coming up along the riverbank and finds himself in a perfect position to strike at the French.

Murray looks at the French, considers his orders- which were to take and hold a secure position on the far bank- and does nothing. This is arguably the great lost opportunity of the Battle of Oporto. Murray has this fantastic chance to descend on the retreating French column while it’s in this demoralised state of disarray. Napier says:

“It was an opportunity that would have tempted a blind man to strike; the neglect of it argued want of military talent…”

Pretty much everyone agrees that Murray dropped the ball here and the 2nd Corps could have been seriously mauled. As it was, the French were still harried, but managed to escape. Wellesley didn’t pursue them too closely- he only had a single cavalry brigade at his disposal and most of it was still on the wrong side of the river. Estimates vary, but Oman puts the French battlefield losses at about 600, plus another 1500 sick and injured that Soult had left behind in Oporto’s hospitals. British losses were comparatively minor: about 125 from all causes.

The Aftermath

Things were about to get worse for Soult though. Having stopped to rest at Baltar, 16km east of Oporto, he received news from Loison at 0100 on the morning of the 13th. Loison had the other 10,000 men of the 2nd Corps, basically half the entire force, and Soult had been expecting him to be holding the bridge over the Tamega at Amarante and keeping the route into the Tras-so-Montes open.

But while Wellesley has been marching up to Oporto and evicting the Marshal, Beresford had been marching to Amarante as well. He joined with General Silveira and, with 10,000 men moved up to confront Loison, who seems to have lost his nerve and fallen back on Guimaraens… putting the Serra de Santa Catalina mountains between his force and Soult’s main body.

According to Oman, when Soult read Loison’s message:

“… he was appalled. All his plans were shattered, and he was clearly in imminent danger, for Wellesley from Oporto and Beresford from Amarante might converge on upon him in the morning, with nearly 30,000 men, if it should chance that they had made out his position.

No help could come from Loison, who, having now reached Guimaraens, was separated from the main body by the roadless expanse of the rugged Serra de Santa Catalina. Eastward lay one hostile force, westward another, to the south was the impassable Douro, to the north the inhospitable mountains.”

The Marshal could only think of one way out: he ordered the 2nd Corps to ditch all of their heavy equipment, artillery and stores- everything that wasn’t man-portable- and set off into the mountains. He figured that there must be some way across, the French managed to discover a Navarrese camp follower in the army who knew a path through to Guimaraens.

Somehow, Soult and his men make it. Wellesely doesn’t continue the pursuit until the 14th: the men have marched 120km from Coimbra to Oporto and then fought a battle so they need to rest, he’s outrun his supplies and the bridge across the Douro is still broken so all the army’s heavy equipment has to be slowly ferried across in boats.

Beresford marches towards Chaves and detaches Silveira to hold two key bridges in the Serra de Santa Catalina, but Soult anticipates being blocked at Chaves and turns north. With Wellesley hot on his heels, he finds first one and then the second bridge on his path held by Ordenanza and in both cases desperately storms them, ultimately escaping across the Portuguese frontier to Ourense, which he arrived at on the 19th.

Wellesley abandoned the pursuit on the same day. The French can outrun him in this terrain now that they’ve ditched all their heavy equipment and news has reached him that Victor’s 1st Corps has crossed into Portugal. Wellesley has to go south and deal with this.

Beresford and Silveira’s forces meanwhile, had been seriously delayed by the mountainous terrain and torrential rainfall and neither of them were able to get into position to intercept the French retreat.

End of the 2nd French Invasion of Portugal

Soult’s withdrawal back into Spain ended the second French invasion of Portugal. Wellesley managed to liberate northern Portugal in nine days at a total cost of only 500 men- including sick as well as battle casualties.

In this he was aided immensely by the Portuguese. Time and again in this campaign, Wellesley reaped the advantages of operating in a friendly country. The British would likely have been delayed on the south bank of the Douro as Soult anticipated were it not for the brave actions of Portuguese civilians. Beresford and Silveira’s Portuguese forces on the eastern flank were the ones that cut the French line of retreat to the east and forced them up into the mountains. It’s easy to talk about the British army in the Peninsula War, but from Wellesley’s return onwards it’s really an Anglo-Portuguese army. As time goes on, the two will become increasingly integrated.

It’s also easy to cast this campaign and the especially the 2nd Battle of Oporto as a cascade of failures on Soult’s part. He wasn’t the first French marshal to underestimate Wellesley and won’t be the last, but he made plenty of mistakes that his opponent was able to exploit. It’s hard to see, for example, how the British could have gotten across the Douro so easily if the French had maintained a better watch over the river or garrisoned the Seminary, which seems in hindsight like a critical position.

But this takes a lot of the credit away from Wellesley. 2nd Oporto is a masterclass in the use of ground and calculated aggression. If he hadn’t hidden his army behind Villa Nova, Soult couldn’t have failed to see it and alter his dispositions. If he hadn’t grasped the importance of both the Seminary and the Serra Convento, then he may have stalled on the south bank. Instead, he occupied a position the French could not afford to ignore, forcing them to attack at a tactical disadvantage and drawing in so many troops that the riverside was left unguarded and he could effect a second crossing.

Wellesley didn’t have to take the opportunities that came his way. He had the only real British field army and any kind of major defeat or disaster would no doubt see the British army pull the plug and abandon the peninsula. A more cautious general would not only probably not have seized the same chances, but not even set off from Lisbon.

So, that’s a quick look at the Second Battle of Oporto and the failure of the Second French Invasion of Portugal. They’ll try again in 1810- I’ve already covered the Battle of Bussaco which was the centrepiece of the initial phase of that campaign.

But that’s it’s for now from the Peninsula War. I hope you all enjoyed this video and found it interesting. If you’d like to see these early and support the channel, you can do so via Patreon and Youtube memberships. Whether you do or not, thanks for watching, and I’ll catch you in the next one.