History of the 95th - Articles (The Battle of Tarbes by Richard Rutherford-Moore)

The Battle of Tarbes

20th March 1814

By Richard Rutherford-Moore

With maps and illustrations added by James Paylor

‘I never saw the dead lie so thick…’

In late February to early March 1814, Marshal Soult’s army was trying to reach Toulouse, a move dictated to the embattled French commander by the terrain, manouevres of Wellington’s army, the danger of encirclement plus the difficulties of operating with the Garonne river to his rear and a hopeful link-up with Suchet’s troops to the east.

Wellington had been slightly wounded by a spent musket ball at the battle at Orthes on February 27th, resulting in him being largely out of things for two days, and then having to take it easy for several more. The French had crossed the Adour river by St Severs on February 28th, where Soult gave the Allied cavalry scouts the slip for a time. Wellington arrived there on March 2^nd to find an astonishing letter from the Mayor of Bordeaux waiting for him; the town - the ‘third city of France’ – was willing to declare for the Royalist cause now Soult’s soldiers had disappeared to the east. Wellington made it known that no political decision had been taken regarding the situation in France post-Bonaparte and the Allies could take no responsibility for retaliation should the town declare for Louis XIII; in reply, Mayor Lynch stated the town was still intending to declare, so Wellington occupied the town by detaching the 7^th Infantry Division escorted by the 4^th Infantry Division and sent for the Heavy Cavalry and Friere’s Spanish infantry from Spain to support them. Once this situation was resolved, Wellington could turn his full attention to Marshal Soult. The French in the field now numbered around 28,000 men and forty guns with the Allies numbering 32,000 with forty guns. Soult also had to contend with about 3000 stragglers and conscripts scooped up and sent to him by the military police, but many of these had no weapons and were of doubtful use.

Allied cavalry patrols found that Soult had re-crossed the Adour at Maubourget. Soult outnumbered the Allies for about ten days as Wellington waited for the 4^th Division to return from Bordeaux; but in terms of military efficiency, the French were suffering from low morale, fatigue and a drop in supplies as the two depots at Mont de Marsan and Dax had been cut off from him. Bonaparte ordered Soult to attack Wellington’s flank with 20,000 men – but by the time Soult had arranged for this, the 4^th Division was approaching and Wellington had placed his available troops in a position favourable for defence. A small French cavalry raid on the flank and rear of the Allies developed at St Severs, but by the end of the day Soult had withdrawn his army towards Tarbes and the heights of Orliex, where on March 20^th they formed line of battle and awaited the Allied pursuit. The danger for Marshal Soult was that Wellington would strike towards Auch and by a fast march gain Toulouse before him. Soult sent his brother Pierre with five regiments of cavalry to watch out for this move, stationing them at Trie and ordering them to keep in touch with the French right flank. Soult had noted that the country around Orliex was difficult for cavalry, and the sending of the French troopers away from the main road would ease the traffic jam should things go awry for the French infantry.

The Allies were moving on the French in three parts ; Hill by the west bank of a major tributary of the Adour river running north from the Pyrenees and Wellington and Beresford by the eastern bank. Three roads were available to the French, and on March 19^th Beresford cut the first of them, cutting the second road the next day leaving behind him only detachments of light cavalry to watch Pierre Soult at Trie should the French cavalry here attempt another ‘raid’.

Two French divisions formed Soult’s rearguard defence. Clausel commanded, with his northernmost division under Harispe and the southernmost under Villatte. To Clausel’s rear across the two tributaries of the Larret and Larros rivers lay D’Erlons two divisions and Reille’s two divisions on the main road from Tarbes. With news of Allied troop movements from his brother at Trie, the main road from Pau - Tarbes - Toulouse was now seen by Soult as the Allied target, perhaps forcing the French to retire by a single road taking the long way around to Toulouse and possibly leaving a large detachment of the French army behind in doing so. D’Erlon and Reille would hold the Allies back should Clausel have to retire under heavy pressure. To be on the safe side, because of the two tributaries of the Adour, Soult had sent away in advance all his baggage and unnecessary vehicles and sent scouts to mark field routes and paths in the correct direction for Clausel’s troops to take from Oleac to reach the main road south-east of Tarbes.

The heights of Orlieux running south to Oleac held by Harispe were formidable, but could be easily outflanked by passing the road to Tarbes. Villatte’s troops were stationed at Oleac to prevent such a move. On March 20^th, Harispe’s troops became Wellington’s target for a pincer movement with Hill moving towards the town of Tarbes to both attack Harispe’s front and pin down Villatte with Clinton’s 6^th Division infantry passing the little hamlet of Dours and attacking the French right flank to try and get between the two French divisions.

The fighting began at noon with an artillery bombardment from Hill on the Allied right and Clinton on the left. Von Alten with the Light Division approached the heights at Oleac sending forward skirmishers from the Second Battalion of the 95^th Rifles. One company of this rifle-armed force advanced towards a picket of the French on a small hillock upon which lay an old stone windmill tower; as they skirmished towards the French they found ever increasing numbers of troops in support of the advance picket sent down from beyond the crest. The rifle company requested support in addition as three counter-attacks were made here across the hill by the French, leaving behind each time hundreds of fallen soldiers; the French here initially thought the enemy skirmishers before them were Portuguese, and charged them with the bayonet - the firmness of the enemy, their failure to retreat in the face of the French charge despite being outnumbered and the losses they inflicted by efficient aimed fire soon indicated reinforced veteran troops and a necessary defensive posture was taken. Surtees, an officer of the 3rd Battalion 95^th Rifles later wrote : “At length, after much skirmishing, we gained the height but found the whole of their infantry drawn up on a steep activity near the windmill which allowed them to have line behind line, all of which could fire at the same time over each others heads like the tiers of guns on a three-deck ship. We continued to advance upon them till we got to within a hundred paces of this formidable body, the firing from which was the hottest I had ever been in: except perhaps at Barrosa.”

The desperate fighting at this spot by Harispe’s left-flank brigade to gain time for the right-flank brigade of their division to escape from Allied encirclement and Villatte’s troops to get away from Tarbes drew in the whole of the Second Battalion 95^th Rifles, followed by the First Battalion and finally by the Third. Harispe’s right-flank brigade was finally forced to run for it by Clinton’s advance, taking to the fields on the routes marked by Soult’s scouts. Under pressure from Hill, seeing the retreat of Harispe on his right, Villatte abandoned Tarbes and made off east along the same road.

The woodlands, hedges, fences, gullies, drains and ditches that Soult had noted did not permit an immediate pursuit by any Allied cavalry. Clausel’s men reached the supporting troops of D’Erlon and Reille, who both opened up with artillery on the Allied infantry when they came into range, halting any pursuit. During the night, Soult ordered a retreat at a fast pace along the main road following signal fires lit by his scouts. His worry was that the Allies would swing due east and make directly for Toulouse; this the Allies did, at no great haste in three columns to allow the approaching 4^th Division coming from Bordeaux to catch up, each infantry column taking one of the available three roads to Toulouse preceded by Allied cavalry. Soult’s troops force marched to Toulouse and managed to reach it first, but in a terrible condition. Clausel’s two divisions suffered most, being tired already from the fighting of March 20^th and being the rearguard having to march cross-country to Montrejean in the early stages as there was no room for them on the single main road.

The fighting on the hill near Oleac is regarded as unique in the annals of the Rifle Brigade, as soldiers from all three battalions fought side-by-side for the only time in the Peninsula War. The French losses around Tarbes were never counted, but were estimated later to exceed four hundred, with the great proportion falling on the hill; the three rifle battalions of the Light Division lost eleven officers and eighty other ranks from a total Allied casualty list of one hundred and twenty. Colonel Andrew Barnard reported to Wellington and requested he come to the hill upon which stood the old tower and see for himself the ‘great slaughter’ that his three rifle battalions had inflicted on the French defenders; Wellington at first declined to do so, later saying ‘Well, Barnard; to please you I will go - but I require no novel proof of the destructive fire of your rifles’.

An officer of the 95^th Rifles later wrote …

“Our three battalions were most sharply engaged; three times the enemy with a greatly superior force endeavoured to drive them off the hill, but the losses of the enemy from the fire of our rifles was so great that one could not believe ones eyes. I certainly had never seen the dead lie so thick; nor ever did, save at Waterloo.”

The old windmill on the hill referred to by several British diarists was at the time of the battle actually a station of the French National semaphore. Damaged in a fire, the windmill was not rebuilt and was converted into a semaphore signal station back in 1799; the signal equipment in the ‘mill’ at the time of the battle was probably destroyed by the French and as a result British historians didn’t find this fact out until 1835. The tower from 1998 is currently being restored and converted into a stellar observatory; during the rebuilding and renovations several mysterious artifacts were found and the history of the battle discovered - (illegal) metal-detecting has indicated there is much more here. A visitor centre is now planned for the future, showing visitors what happened here in March 1814. In the interests of all, the author has made all his research, maps, photographs and illustrations on the site available to the pleasantly-surprised owners of the old mill after a visit to the spot in 2000.

A wanderer on the battlefield today can traverse the heights of Orliex from the direction of Rabastens and starting south of old Dours all the way to Tarbes if you have a map and around two to three hours to spare. William Napier included a map of period operations in this area in his ‘History’; most useful as some place-names have changed. The area around the hill upon which the old mill tower stands is mostly private property (of course) but crossed by footpaths, one of which - despite some modern barbed wire entanglements and a small copse - gives (from a farm on the old road from Vic Bigorre) a rough approximation of the approach route for the 95^th Rifles, finally attacking the hill up the west and south-west slopes along a frontage of about two hundred metres. Although appearing grassy and unkempt, livestock in the form of cattle is kept in these fields – beware of the bull and don’t touch the more convenient fences here to see if they really are electrified. Visitors are welcomed to the old tower, but it is still a building site at the time of writing and access to the tower itself is granted only under special circumstances accompanied by the owner. Local folklore in Oleac has it that the French and British fallen are buried in a mass grave at a certain spot nearby. Near Oleac, you can take a pre-battle ancient path (one of those marked by Soult’s scouts) going across fields heading south-east to the main road and Soult’s second position over the Larros river; you’ll be going the same way as many of Harispe’s soldiers and their Light Division pursuers did in the afternoon of March 20^th - but - despite pleasant scenery it takes at least an hour and there are a few small hazards to negotiate along the way. It's a pity I can't find the photos to go with the article. The chap who was restoring the Semaphore Tower mentioned found a lot of bullets etc on site and was wondering how they came to be there (that was the state of 'local knowledge' before I sent him my stuff). An unknown Englishman disputes the location of the fighting but the presence of rifle-bullets seem to indicate he is off the mark. It's not an outstanding battle save the young soldiers of the French rearguard were very stalwart in the face of adversity and it was the only occasion that all three 95th Battalions acted in close company ... hence the carnage.