Rifles: Six Years With Wellington's Legendary Sharpshooters by Mark Urban

most able marshals, Michel Ney, arrived with his 6thCorps to encircle the nearby Spanish fortress of Ciudad Rodrigo. The French intended to take it by regular approaches: trenches and breaching batteries, leading eventually to a storm. With many thousands of troops now supporting this operation, the meagre resources of the frontier were soon picked bare, and Ney’s foraging parties began going out in wider circles. Since Spanish guerrillas patrolled the hills, murdering French stragglers without ceremony, they could not scavenge supplies in small groups.
    Wellington batted away a series of proposed operations by Craufurd. Eventually, though, the brigadier set off regardless, and on 11 July, Craufurd led a mixed force of Rifles, light infantry and cavalry to surprise a French foraging party of about two hundred infantry and a few dozen cavalry.
    This little combat, at a place called Barquilla, was mismanaged by Craufurd. He held the infantry back and tried to defeat the French with cavalry alone. The enemy formed square and saw off repeated attacks. The British cavalry limped home, having lost several men, and the French party made it back to Ciudad Rodrigo, its commander receiving the Légion d’honneur for his stubborn resistance.
    Resentment of Craufurd simmered once again in his battalions. One of his own staff commented, ‘Craufurd cruelly tried to cut up a handful of brave men, and they thrashed him.’ Many of the party considered that sending several hundred cavalry against the French had been a sort of sadistic experiment on Craufurd’s part – to see whether such a small group of infantry could defend themselves effectively against cavalry. They also speculated whether their commander was seeking such engagements purely to buttress his own reputation. But Marshal Ney was not the man to meddle with if you just wanted a few glorious mentions in dispatches: the affair at Barquilla would prove a portent of a far more costly humiliation for Craufurd, little over a fortnight later.

FIVE
     
The Coa
     
July 1810
     
    The 95th’s pickets greeted first light, that 24 July, with the heartfelt relief of men who have endured a sleepless and rain-sodden night. Their duty was a difficult one, for they knew that Marshal Ney’s 6th Corps lay just in front of them. The snoozing men behind depended entirely on their outlying sentinels for their safety. For several days, the Light Division had been manoeuvring about the plateau between the Coa and Agueda rivers, often glimpsing the French and firing into their forward scouts. Ney had taken Ciudad Rodrigo by assault and, having secured this fortress, everybody now expected him to move into Portugal.
    Craufurd had posted his division so that it might cover the withdrawal of some supplies from Almeida. These wagons would have to be taken from the Portuguese stronghold, which would be Ney’s next target, two and a half miles down the road. Craufurd’s battalions ran from north, just by the walls of the fortress, to south, where they were close to the only line of withdrawal across that difficult obstacle. From top to bottom they went: 43rd, closest to Almeida; 3rd (Portuguese) Cacadores ; 1st Cacadores ; 52nd. These Portuguese were clad in brown uniforms and had been trained to perform the same skirmishing tactics as the division’s British troops. They were also being equiped with the Baker rifle, although there never proved enough for all of these rangers to have one. Apart from the sprinkling of British officers who led them, the Cacadores were generally stocky, black-haired, olive-skinned and enjoyed their own amusements. In bivouacs they would laugh and halloo into the night, gambling over cards, and they returned the suspicious glances of Craufurd’s British soldiers with interest.
    The Rifles covered the front of this line of battalions: the 1stCompany manned the outlying picket in the northern half, the 2nd Company (Leach’s) the southern. Behind them, close in to the