In the Words of Wellington's Fighting Cocks

The After-action Reports of the Portuguese Army during the Peninsular War 1812–1814

Moisés Gaudêncio, Robert Burnham

• Publisher: Pen and Sword Military
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781526761699
• Topic: Histoire
• Subtopic: Guerres napoléoniennes

The literature of the Peninsular War is rich with vivid source material – letters, diaries, memoirs, and dispatches – but most of it was written by British soldiers or by the French and their allies. As a result the history and experience of the Portuguese forces – which by 1812 composed close to half of Wellington’s Army – have been seriously under-represented. That is why this pioneering book, which publishes for the first time in English the after-action reports written by the commanders of Portuguese battalions, regiments and brigades, is so important. For these detailed, graphic firsthand accounts give us a fascinating insight into the vital contribution the Portuguese made to the allied army and shed new light on the struggle against the French in the Iberian Peninsula. The authors provide an introduction tracing the history of the Portuguese Army prior to the Salamanca campaign of 1812, while tracking its organizational changes and assignment of commanders from 1808 to 1814. They include detailed notes on the after-action reports which set them in the context of each stage of the conflict.

Chapter 1

The Portuguese Army from 1793 to 1812

It would be almost impossible to understand the Portuguese Army in the latter years of the Napoleonic Wars without some historical background on how it became such an integral part of Wellington’s Army. This chapter briefly examines Portugal’s involvement in the Wars of the French Revolution, the Peninsular War, and the Civil War that divided Portugal in the 1820s and 1830s. We then continue with an overview of the Portuguese military system at the time of the Peninsular War. There is not room to explain in detail the changes, reforms, and reorganizations that the army underwent in this period for that is a book in itself, but we will provide enough information to help the reader’s understanding of the events referred to in the reports and biographies.

Years of Turmoil

Despite being isolated from the upheaval of the early years of the French Revolution, Portugal, at the request of Spain, and supported by Britain, joined the 1st Coalition’s war against the French Republic in 1792. In 1793 a Portuguese fleet of eighteen ships carried a Portuguese division to Catalonia. This division, of 5,500 men and 22 artillery pieces, was under the command of General John Skelater. It took part in the campaign in Rossillon, southern France, and in the eastern Pyrenees, and Catalonia, and remained there until peace was declared in 1795.

From that date on, France and Spain, now allies, put continuous pressure on Portugal to quit its traditional alliance with Britain. Portugal resisted both diplomatic pressure and military threats until 1801, when it was forced to defend itself against a Spanish invasion, supported by France, the so-called War of the Oranges. Between February and June it engaged in a disastrous campaign and was forced to sign the Treaty of Badajoz on 6 June 1801. In accordance with the treaty, among other harsh conditions, Portugal agreed to close its ports to British shipping and to hand over the town of Olivença to Spain.

Taking advantage of the Peace of Amiens, the Franco-Spanish defeat at Trafalgar, and Napoleon’s engagements in central Europe, Portugal delayed complying with the treaty on the closing of its ports to the British for fear of British reprisals against its overseas possessions. Napoleon’s Berlin Decree of 21 November 1806 establishing the continental blockade left Portugal in a difficult position, being one of the last European countries open to British commerce. The evasive behaviour of the Portuguese government was no longer to be tolerated, and Napoleon ordered the occupation of Portugal.

In November 1807 a French army under General Andoche Junot, supported by several Spanish divisions, invaded Portugal. The Portuguese Queen Maria and her court fled to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Prior to leaving, João, the Prince Regent, ordered that no resistance to the French was to be made. The Prince also appointed a government council in Lisbon to rule the kingdom and deal with the French. In February 1808 Napoleon declared that the Portuguese royal house of Bragança was no longer the legitimate rulers of Portugal. The government council was deposed, the Portuguese military system dismantled, and a corps of Portuguese troops was sent to France. They were organized there as the Legion Portugaise.

In the spring of 1808 Spain revolted against the French, who had begun to occupy the country. In June an insurrection against French rule erupted in the northernmost and southernmost provinces of Portugal. Local juntas were formed to organize the rebellion. The following month the French sent forces into Beira and Alentejo provinces to suppress the insurrection but had little success. About this time the Junta Suprema at Oporto took political control of the northern provinces. In August the British sent a small army under Wellington to assist the Portuguese. A small force hastily raised in the northern provinces by the Oporto Junta marched south to join Wellington and their combined army defeated the French at Roliça and Vimeiro. Another small force raised in the southern provinces also marched on Lisbon. The defeat of the French Army resulted in the Convention of Cintra, where it was agreed that the French would evacuate Portugal. The British reinstated the Portuguese government council, known as the Regency, which started regaining political control of the kingdom and organizing an army.

The Regency realized that they needed to modernize their army and looked for an outsider to do it. They asked the British government for an officer to take command of the new army. In March 1809 Lieutenant General William Beresford was appointed commander-in-chief of the Portuguese Army with the rank of marshal. With the support of a group of British officers who were commissioned into the Portuguese Army, he began to organize the Portuguese Army in accordance with British standards. Later that month Wellington, who had been recalled to Britain in October to testify at an inquiry about the Convention of Cintra, arrived back in Portugal to take command of the British Army in Portugal. He also took command of the Portuguese Army with the rank of marshal general. Over the next five years he led the combined Anglo-Portuguese Army in the Peninsular War.

After the war ended in April 1814 Wellington’s Army was disbanded and the Portuguese troops marched back to Portugal. The royal court, which had been in Brazil since 1807, decided not to return to Portugal. In 1815 the Prince Regent ordered the raising of the Divisão dos Voluntários Reais do Príncipe13 from the Portuguese Army, under the command of General Carlos Frederico Lecor. The division was shipped to southern Brazil with the objective of invading the Banda Oriental, part of the Spanish territories of La Plata, which would become modern Uruguay. From July 1816 to 1820 the division’s Peninsular veterans and Brazilian forces fought and defeated the Uruguayan resistance. In the year following Banda Oriental was annexed with the name of Cisplatina province, whose capital was the city of Montevideo.

In August 1820 a liberal rebellion broke out in Portugal and by September it had brought down the Regency in Lisbon. It installed a parliament known as the Cortes, which wrote and implemented a written constitution for the country. The following year the former Prince Regent, now King João VI, returned to Lisbon and assumed his new role as a constitutional king.

In 1822 Brazil declared its independence from Portugal. Prince Pedro, King João’s eldest son, was named Emperor of Brazil. Several army garrisons remained loyal to Portugal, namely those at Bahia, Montevideo, and Maranhão. Fighting broke out, but the Brazilians prevailed and the last Portuguese troops in South America left Montevideo in 1824.

In 1823 Prince Miguel, the king’s youngest son, with the support of the army, led a coup-d’état against the Cortes that ended the liberal experience. Portugal returned to an absolutist regime and Prince Miguel was appointed commander-in-chief of the army.

In the next eleven years Portugal was torn apart by the conflict between two parties with irreconcilable visions for the future of the country. The conservative Absolutist Party headed by Prince Miguel fought the liberal Constitutional Party, supporting Princess Maria’s claim to the throne, and led by her father, the former Emperor of Brazil, Prince Pedro, leading to an all-out civil war that lasted from 1828 to 1834. The Portuguese Civil War – also known as the Liberal Wars, the Miguelite War, and the War of the Two Brothers – ended with a liberal victory and the establishment of a constitutional monarchy in Portugal.

The Portuguese Military System

The Role of the Sovereign

From 1777 the sovereign of Portugal was Queen Maria but due to her mental illness her son, Prince João, governed in her name from 1792. In 1799 he took the title of Prince Regent and became King João VI in 1816 when his mother died. The sovereign ruled through his ministers and several councils. These ministers were called secretaries of state and they formed the government. Since the seventeenth century the most important ruling body in the army’s chain of command was the Conselho de Guerra or War Council, which managed the daily administration of the army, the appointment of its officers, and reviewed sentences of courts-martial. Another council, the Junta dos Três Estados, was responsible for the finances and supply of the army. The post of Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and War was created in 1736 to increase the king’s control over military matters and to coordinate the action of the different administrative bodies of the army. Over time, the modernization of the military led to an increase in the influence of the secretary at the expense of the War Council. Beginning in 1801 several departments were set up as part of the Real Erário14 to mana...