The Last Cartridge
Battle of Fuente Ovejuna
7th September 1810
A Tale of the Napoleonic Wars
Based on a True Story
Introduction
by Richard "Rifleman" Rutherford-Moore
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At right, "The Last Cartridge," a sketch by David Montesciou: the original is in the Musee de l'Armee, Paris. Cyr Billot is the central figure in the sketch.
Europe has been in turmoil and war for over twenty years, beginning in 1789 with Revolution in France; later as a result of the evolution of the ideals of the Revolution into the mighty French Empire under Napoleon Bonaparte, and his wars against the Ancien Regime dynasties and monarchies in Europe. Up to 1809, his armies had been invincible.
Wellington and the 60,000-strong Anglo-Portuguese Army were retreating down through Portugal before Marshal Massena's army of 130,000 on the road to Lisbon. In the far south of Spain, Cadiz was still under siege. Over 300,000 French soldiers occupied vast tracts of Spain, controlling no more than the area over which their musket balls would carry - sometimes not even that.
The war here on the Iberian Peninsula had begun with Napoleon, Emperor of France since 1804, noticing that Portugal - Britain's oldest ally - was still declaring neutrality whilst all the rest of Europe was at war. Britain had announced that no ships on the world's seas could consider itself a neutral in the struggle against Napoleonic France and the ensuing blockades of unfriendly ports and coastlines; Napoleon countered with a decree stating that if the British Government would suffer no neutrals by sea, he would suffer none by land. An agreement was quickly reached with the corrupt Prime Minister of Spain, Manuel de Godoy - already a French puppet as Spain was already at war with Britain through the work of French diplomacy - for a right of passage for an army on the march, and a large force under Marshal Junot set off south across the Pyrenees.13 They reached Lisbon after a gruelling forced march just in time to see the Portuguese Royal Family sailing over the horizon on the ships of the Royal Navy. Caught between the two battling giants of France and Britain, Portugal was now in the war whether it wanted to be or not.
Napoleon meanwhile engineered the abdication of the entire Spanish Royal Family, spiriting them away to Valencay in France, and replacing them on the throne of Spain with his brother, Joseph Bonaparte. Across the border from Portugal in Spain, French troops - now openly an army of occupation - demanded food and drink from the towns and villages and their generals openly looted Spanish treasure houses and places of art. On May 1st 1808, the people in the capital Madrid recovered from their characteristic listlessness and erupted into revolt, followed later by all the provinces. [14]
The Prime Minister went into hiding from a howling mob seeking his blood; the revolt was cruelly crushed next day with military precision by the French - but the seeds were sown - Spain was now in open and angry revolt in every place where there were no enemy soldiers; and where the Spanish were strong enough, the French soldiers were attacked. A Spanish army supported by the people in revolt surrounded a badly handled French one in the mountains of Andalusia at Bailen in 1808 and forced it to surrender - on honourable terms.
These terms were then immediately renounced and Dupont's soldiers had been stripped and marched off to rot on bad water and little food in the prison hulks at Cadiz. The people then had been eager to fight - but two years had passed and the Spanish victory had not been repeated. Defeat after defeat of successive Spanish armies had led to a lack of confidence. The Emperor Napoleon himself had chased General Moore and the perfidious English interference out of Spain that same year, after the British Government took the opportunity for the unrest to land soldiers in support of Portugal by invading Spain - a country they were both officially at war with and unofficially supporting at the same time. Only last year another impudent British Army under Sir Arthur Wellesley had been forced to retreat at a battle near Talavera alongside their Spanish allies who had almost been destroyed 15 whilst driving toward Madrid. Marshal Massena was even now pushing the remnants through Portugal to the sea at Lisbon, their tails apparently between their legs. Some of the more liberal reforms of Tio Pepe [1] had filtered down from Madrid and were being slowly seen to be good for Spain by the new Cortes.
Bands of itinerant Spanish freedomfighters had banded together into roving bands of outlaws; some were genuine patriots, others were no more than banditti - they brought a new word to warfare; le guerilla - the 'little war' - and fought a very private little struggle against the French army of occupation supported clandestinely by villagers and townspeople. They stole arms and weapons, and wore as clothes whatever they could get their hands on - they could not be seen nor identified, as they wore no uniform except a sullen look.
By day they were often also labourers, bakers, butchers or candle-makers - by night, they slipped out along darkened streets with a knife or a gun and were a constant source of irritation for French soldiers who woke each morning to find sentries with their throats cut, ground glass in their flour, poisoned meat , fouled wells or hamstrung supply mules. Such acts of defiance led to reprisals and punishments - this led to an escalation of violence and pretty soon the French army was embroiled on two fronts in the Peninsula; one against regular armies equipped with muskets, cavalry and cannon - and another against an unseen opponent who never came to a battlefield to fight in the infantry line but brought in the night the dangers of the battlefield to every French soldier whilst he was away from one.
More Last Cartridge
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The action at Fuente Ovejuna in Spain between a single company of ninety-six soldiers of the 51eme Infanterie de Ligne au L'Empereur Napoleon and Morillo's Division of the Spanish Army of the Marques de la Romana on 7th September 1810. This story is dedicated to the officers, men and women of the Recreated 21eme Infanterie de Ligne au L'Empereur; through 'Fortune of War' some are no longer with us.